![Highway patrol boss Senior Sergeant Ian Brooks says drivers should get the message that police can be anywhere at any time. Picture by Glenn Daniels Highway patrol boss Senior Sergeant Ian Brooks says drivers should get the message that police can be anywhere at any time. Picture by Glenn Daniels](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/166161973/3ba7ab64-9b5a-4d25-bed5-c53326926941.jpg/r0_0_1074_678_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A Bendigo driver instantly lost both their licence and their car when the vehicle was allegedly caught travelling at more than 25km over the speed limit.
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They were caught in Victoria Police's Operation West Connect, a monthly 24-hour road blitz, that was held on July 27.
In Bendigo's western region division 5, it netted nine people travelling at speeds 10kmh or less over the limit, 12 who were exceeding the limit by 10 to 25km/h and five doing 25km/h or more over.
"Five people went out driving last Thursday and came home without a licence, and in some cases, without a car," region division 5 highway patrol manager Senior Sergeant Ian Brooks told the Advertiser.
"Two of them were on such high speeds that their cars were immediately impounded as well."
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One of the speedsters was from Bendigo and the other was a Swan Hill driver caught near Kerang, Senior Sergeant Brooks said.
It was disappointing that police were seeing "a spike" in 10kmh-or-less speeding offences, he said, while the high number of people in the 10-25kmh over the limit category were "bordering on ridiculous".
Overall, police charged 37 people in western region division 5 - which stretches from Gisborne to Echuca, west to Maryborough and up through Bendigo.
Among the charges were 15 non-speeding offences, including driving unregistered vehicles, not wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones.
On a positive note, the senior sergeant said, police had carried out 168 breath tests and 25 drug tests without finding anyone affected by drugs or driving over the blood alcohol limit, which was "fantastic".
"Unfortunately it's unusual that we don't get a positive reading out of drugs but we have those days occasionally when we test a lot of people and don't get them."
Operation West Connect, which is run on randomly selected days across the entire region, sees "a constant feed of police cars" out on arterial and back roads, the senior sergeant said.
"If you drove on one of the major arterials in Western and Northern Victoria on Thursday there's every chance you would have seen a highway patrol car during the course of your drive.
"It wasn't just us, there was units from Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Horsham - everywhere. Every highway patrol in our entire region committed to that operation."
"It's just bringing people back to the messaging that we can be anywhere at any time and not necessarily always in the daylight," he said.
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