BY Christine de Kock
THE crackdown on drivers street racing, doing burn-outs and engaging in other dangerous behaviour on the road resulted in police seizing the cars of 1,014 Victorians since July last year.
Victoria Police last week released the suburbs of where these drivers lived, and the City of Maribyrnong was home to 10 hoons.
Police seized the cars of three drivers in Yarraville, three in Braybrook, two in West Footscray, one in Kingsville and one in Maribyrnong.
The municipality did comparatively better than to suburbs such as Dandenong, where there were 22 seizures.
Dandenong led the list of suburbs where seizures were made, followed by Frankston (19), and St Albans, Hoppers Crossing and Mill Park (all on 18).
A Victoria Police statement said that about half the 1,014 drivers had probationary licences and all but 11 of the drivers were male.
Acting Inspector Michael Grainger of Footscray Police said the Maribyrnong Traffic Management Unit responsible assisted other districts in operations aimed at stopping hoon driving.
“Although daily we are looking at it as an issue we are also looking at the problems of other districts that surround us,” he said.
Act Insp Grainger added that figures for the City of Maribyrnong may also reflect community awareness of hoon laws.
“There’s been a very public media campaign conducted by Victoria Police across the state in respect to that legislation,” he said.
“In terms of community contacts we participate in a number of community forums completely supportive of the legislation.”
He added that for the month of January “we had over 1100 preliminary breath tests conducted by our unit and 760 total traffic offences detected”.
