Cars are being impounded in Wyndham at up to three times the rate of neighbouring municipalities.
New figures released by Victoria Police reveal that police impounded 214 cars in Wyndham in the 2015 calendar year, up from 158 in 2014.
Last year’s impoundments involved 89 drivers who lost their cars for driving while suspended or disqualified; 26 had exceeded the blood-alcohol limit of 0.05; and 22 drove at more than 45km/h above the speed limit. Across the Westgate division, 89 cars were impounded in Hobsons Bay in 2015, while 66 were impounded in Maribyrnong.
Westgate highway patrol unit commander Damien Madden said that in the first seven months of this year, car impounds in Wyndham jumped 53 per cent compared to the same period last year.
Senior Sergeant Madden said impoundments had increased slightly in Maribyrnong over the same period, while in Hobsons Bay the numbers fell, also slightly.
“They’ve [impoundments] gone through the roof in Wyndham for the first seven months.”
Senior Sergeant Madden said that in Wyndham, about two-thirds of drivers whose cars were impounded actually live in the area.
In Maribyrnong, only a small percentage of local residents had their cars impounded; most offenders were only travelling through the area.
“We’ve done some work recently to look at the number of banned drivers – disqualified, suspended, that type of thing – and their representation in collisions. We have recidivists who cause us a lot of grief and we target them.”
In the west, Wyndham came second in the number of impoundments to Brimbank, whose highway patrol impounded 430 cars in 2015.
Senior Sergeant Madden said Brimbank was able to impound higher numbers of cars because it had exclusive access to a BlueNet car, which is fitted with Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology that detects stolen cars and number plates, unregistered vehicles and unlicensed drivers.
