VICTORIA'S road toll has soared to 188, but unfortunately we are not the only state that has seen a sharp increase this year.
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The massive 43.5 per cent increase to date on last year has given police impetus to create a national day of road safety which is being run all around the country, but particularly focused in rural and regional roads.
Today, with so many police will be out on the roads you will be incredibly lucky if you avoid a breath test or a number plate check as roads will be blitzed by all available police and sheriff officers.
Ballarat's acting Inspector Trevor Cornwill said the initiative was designed to remind drivers to always be alert.
"Earlier this year all the deputy commissioners got together to discuss the ongoing issue of the increased road toll," Inspector Cornwill said.
"Obviously it's been a terrible year here in Victoria, but unfortunately it's also been a big increase in the road toll trend across the country.
"The decision was taken that there would be a national day of road policing action in order to reduce the impact of trauma across the community.
"It's a joint initiative to have highly visible policing resources across Australia's rural roads and regional settings."
Inspector Cornwill said in the western region alone, there were 29,000km of roads to police.
"We will have local police, state highway patrol as well as the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) car which is out to scan plates," he said.
"Today we are targeting speed, impaired driving such as drink and drug driving, distraction offences which obviously relates to things like mobile phones, even hands free is a distraction, people need to consider if they can make a call at another time, even that is a distraction because you focus on the conversation not the road.
"The other one that continues to amaze is seatbelts, still today we see people without seatbelts on, often those are maybe farming vehicles who are travelling from one paddock to another, but we all know how the road toll dropped in the 1970s once seat belt laws came in. Just put it on."
Inspector Cornwill said after 17 deaths on our roads in the first half of the year, it had slightly eased off, but he warned we were now moving into the most dangerous time of the year.
"In the winter people go to work and they come home, but as soon as it gets lighter and warmer, more people are outside and there are more events happening which means there are more people on the roads. The longer you are out, the more risk there is.
"We've also got a some big long weekends coming up including Melbourne Cup weekend, which can be a terrible weekend on the roads and also the AFL Grand Final weekend these days as well."
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