Shocking: Drunk and speeding drivers
EXCLUSIVE: Seven News has obtained pictures of frightening police pursuits where innocent lives are put at risk.
Footage shows a sedan race past a highway patrol car, and then police give chase.
Officers already know that the driver is speeding and they’re about to discover the man is rolling drunk too.
He pulls over and gives them the finger then, almost comically, stumbles away holding up his pants, as officers chase on foot and nab him.
The 20-year-old Mullumbimby man can barely stand, let alone drive, even as he's being propped up.
At Sleepy Hollow on the Pacific Highway, police footage catches a 26-year-old motorcyclist taking on police, weaving in and out of traffic, relenting only as he enters a 60km/hr zone.
"You have put probably 80 or 90 people's lives at risk there," the arresting officer said.
Police engage in 16,000 pursuits every year.
"You can't, sort of, get it in your mind as to why people would do such stupid and dangerous acts on NSW roads," Traffic and Highway Patrol Superintendant Stuart Smith said.
Robwyn Delboe lives with the consequences of stupidity. An erratic driver killed her daughter, Chantelle, on the Hume Highway at Warwick Farm in 2008.
"Like all young people that lose their lives, she was very beautiful," Robwyn said.
"It was three families. Our family, the passenger's family and equally the perpetrator's family as well. We've all suffered."
Yet police are concerned drivers will always be complacent. Fatalities are up 24 on this time last year, with an increase in pedestrian-related and motorcycle deaths.
While drive-by shootings and murders steal the headlines, they are dwarfed by the yearly toll on our roads.
And we can expect to see more highway patrol this Christmas.
"You've got to sow the seeds of doubt in the motorists' mind that over the next hill, or around the corner, there's a highway patrol car," New South Wales Police Minister Michael Gallacher said.
