Cobden man blows .283 on Camperdown-Cobden Road

Warrnambool police Acting Inspector Paul Marshall said the Cobden man who returned a reading of .283 should be ashamed of himself.

"That sort of reading is just astronomical," he said.

"It's nearly six times the legal limit and is plain outrageous. To think that someone can drink to that extent and then get behind a wheel is extremely concerning."

The motorist was intercepted driving on Cobden's Camperdown-Cobden Road late last month, his driver's licence was immediately suspended and his vehicle was impounded at a cost of $1295.

Acting Inspector Marshall said if you think you can drive over the legal limit "you're kidding yourself".

"You may think you can drive but statistics and research says your reaction time is quite diminished," he said.

"If your actions are skewed, all it takes is a pedestrian or an animal to walk out and you're off the road and you or someone else is a fatality. We don't want that, we're all part of this community and we grieve and mourn every single injury or death on our roads."

It's been a horror two months on south-west roads with a male motorcyclist dying following a crash at Allansford on May 26 and the death of a 75-year-old pedestrian in Warrnambool on June 6 after a collision with a car.

Four days later a 50-year-old Gorae woman died in a collision with a tree north of Portland and a 20-year-old Simpson woman was swept away in flood waters while driving to work.

Acting Inspector Marshall said road safety was everyone's responsibility.

"Speeding, intoxication (drugs and/or alcohol), failure to wear a seat belt, driver fatigue and distraction are all great contributors to road trauma," he said.

"We call them the fatal five and whether in combination or singular, they create a higher chance of having an accident."

The acting inspector said if a motorist veered off a south-west rural road, it was luck if they survived.

"Most of our rural roads have no safety treatments either side so if you veer off for whatever reason, at high speed or even within the rural speeds of 80km/h to 100km/h, the chances of hitting a tree and surviving are not great," he said.

"We all know that yet we still see people involved in an accident not wearing seat belts, driving fatigued impaired and over the speed limit."

The motorist was charged on summonsed and will appear in Warrnambool Magistrates Court at a later date.

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