Police blitz on roads

Quick response after six deaths in three days

FRUSTRATED police will launch a major traffic operation across the state’s entire northern region after a horrific string of fatal crashes.

Five Far North residents have died in less than a fortnight, and the past weekend was particularly shocking with six deaths in the North and Far North regions in three days.

The carnage has prompted action from senior officers who say they are sick of delivering the same road safety messages “week after week” and will now turn that into action.

The Bruce Highway between Cairns and Townsville will be a key focus of the blitz, which began on Monday, and Cairns Road Policing Unit officers will join forces with their Townsville counterparts to increase patrols.

Cairns RPU boss Acting

Senior Sergeant Marc Rodgers warned that marked and unmarked vehicles, speed cameras and other devices would be used in a desperate bid to keep people safe. Leading up to school holidays, which begin on Friday, officers wanted to be on the front foot with a “high policing presence”.

“We’ve had enough, we need to be out there, you need to see us,” he said.

A 43-year-old Mt Sheridan man was the latest fatality on Far North roads after the Toyota LandCruiser he was driving veered off the Cairns Western Arterial Road at Brinsmead early on Sunday and crashed down an embankment.

Far North police Acting Insp James Coate said the cause of the crash was still under investigation.

Mareeba man Jayden Pickering, 21, died on Friday after rolling his car on a remote dirt road less than a kilometre from his house.

Sixteen people have died in the Far North from crashes this year.