OPERATION Wild Car, a borough-wide campaign to challenge driver behaviour, has seen a 71 per cent reduction in serious injury road traffic collisions.

Cheshire Police launched the high profile operation in July when there were four serious injury collisions on Warrington's roads, compared to 14 during the same period last year.

Several motorists were handed verbal warnings about their driving behaviour and a number were given fixed penalty notices for jumping red lights.

Over the past two years, July has suffered a disproportionate number of accidents in comparison to other months.

Warrington's main A-roads - the A49, A57, A574, A56 and A50 - account for a large proportion of injury collisions, with excessive or inappropriate speed, driving too close or taking the wrong course (lane discipline) as the major contributing factors.

A highly visible police presence targeted locations as part of Operation Wild Car in an effort to challenge driver behaviour and deal positively with observed poor driving standards and breaches of road traffic legislation.

Sergeant Mike Jones, of Warrington's road policing unit, said: "The drop in serious collisions is very encouraging. However, we need to continue educating motorists and monitoring their behaviour to make sure the number of road traffic collisions continues to fall.

"It's also down to individual motorists to be mindful of their driving standards and to comply with the rules of the road."

Similar operations to Wild Car will be carried out throughout the borough in the future.