The road toll has reached a 15-year high with 251 lives lost to date after 13 lives were lost during the Melbourne Cup long weekend.

Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing, Glenn Weir says “too many people have died”.

“Ultimately … the only set of numbers that really matter to me are the trauma numbers, so you would say despite the record number of enforcement and all the output we did, way too many people died, so by any measure, the weekend was horrible,” he told Neil Mitchell.

Press PLAY to hear how the latest police operation went

Mr Weir also says police did things differently during the operation.

“We detected so many people, so we’re not going to back away from that,” he said.

Images: iStock.