No road deaths this Easter

Police are celebrating the first holiday weekend in which nobody died on the roads but say that the challenge now is to keep the good results coming.

The Easter holiday period saw a reduction in all traffic related events including crashes.

"There were in fact, more than 500 crashes over the weekend, but fortunately none of them involved a fatality" said Acting Superintendent Rob Morgan.

This is a considerable reduction when compared to last Easter when there were almost 600 crashes and goes some way to explaining why we have managed to achieve this outstanding result.

"The number of crashes overall was down and traffic related calls were up, indicating perhaps that the driving public is getting behind our efforts and taking the "road safety is everyone's responsibility" idea on board."

We did have a helping hand with some great weather and the lowered tolerance goes some way to lowering mean speeds."

The road safety initiatives such as wire rope barriers, roading improvements and vehicle safety that have been introduced as a result of the Government's Safer Journeys Strategy may also now be beginning to show results too.

"It really does make a difference as we have shown this weekend - the challenge now is to keep the good results coming," he said.