Death rates on roads DOWN, except for the foreigners...

For all of those who believe and vehemently defend that speed camera's should be installed on every mile of British roads, congratulations - this article from the Sunday Times shows deaths and accidents are down.

Superb, wonderful, excellent - desired effect starting to happen. Ah - yes and no.....

However, as a Senior Police source says there were unlikely to be substantial falls in the future. "We've had seatbelts, drink-drive legislation and safer cars as three major milestones in the past couple of decades - there's nothing else to come, except changing driver behaviour." Let's dig below those statistics..

Of the all accidents on the M25, one third at minimum are Lefthook lorries just driving into UK cars. And then there's the speeding offences - around 3 a day in Kent, 4 a day in Sussex: all unprosectuted. And what about the accidents - 35fatal and 29serious in Kent in 2004, of which 14 involved foreign vehicles. The same percentage as for Lothian and Borders police - and you can't argue they have the main access point to Europe now can you?

Road safety is about design, education - and systems. So why don't we all just accept that we need to drive on the left? Put in place a re-test every 5 or 10 years (every 2years with my pilot's licence)? And than rather than all these camera's - put in place a tolling system (with booths) that charges the driver for road usage - all drivers, even the foreigners: even those that don't pay their parking fines, and won't be able to speed because they are timed between the booths - and then automatically fined, over what ever distance.

Excessive speed is wrong - particularly when the limit say X and the road conditions say something less.

Speed camera's - a nice idea that just doesn't work long term! Safety Camera Partnership - do gooders with blinkers and the wrong objectives....