NOT altogether dissimilar to the appalling performance from the Sydney Swans, the Southern Grampians Police Service Area didn’t perform much better during Victoria Police’s Operation Scoreboard, the annual state-wide road policing effort over the extra-long weekend.

Police were targeting high-risk driving behaviour over the five-day state-wide road policing operation, that began at 12:01am Wednesday, September 21, and ran until 11:59pm Sunday, September 25, with a particular focus on speeding, impaired driving, and distracted drivers.

Across the Southern Grampians Police Service Area, which covers the two local government areas (LGAs) of the Southern Grampians and Glenelg Shires, 63 people were caught speeding.

That area includes the towns of Balmoral, Branxholme, Casterton, Cavendish, Coleraine, Dartmoor, Dunkeld, Hamilton, Heywood, Merino, Penshurst and Portland.

Seven people were also caught driving unregistered vehicles, five were over the limit, four committed seatbelt offences, there were two vehicle impoundments and cyclist offences, and one each for driving while drug impaired, driving whilst disqualified or unlicensed, and one committed a mobile phone offence.

Western District Division 2 Highway Patrol senior sergeant and road safety manager, Matt Wheeler, wasn’t impressed with the number of offences recorded for the region.

“Obviously in a perfect world, we want to see much better driving behaviour,” he said.

“Of the highest concern is speeding drivers detected on rural roads within both LGAs showing up in our collision data for being high risk accident locations.

“The message I’d like to get across to people is; they need to be driving to the speed limit and to the road conditions.

“We actually have a special operation going at the moment where we are specifically targeting drug and alcohol impaired driving, particularly those people leaving hotels late, or licensed premises or sporting clubs, across the whole division.”

Across the state, more than 7000 offences were detected during Operation Scoreboard over the National Day of Mourning and AFL Grand Final long weekend.

Police also increased their focus on motorcycle safety during the operation following a recent spike in motorcycle trauma, with 238 motorcycle offences detected.