IT is difficult to argue against road safety initiatives. All of us know someone who has been injured, or worse, upon our roads.

That said, someone has to speak out against this speed camera lunacy. New Road is to be fitted with "spy" cameras, because four people have been killed or injured in two years.

I calculate that 44 million journeys are made along New Road in two years. That means the chances of being killed or injured, in one journey, are one in 11 million, about the same as winning the Lottery, or five times greater than being involved in a lightning strike.

That means New Road's accident rate is no greater than random chance.

M Brandon quotes government statistics that imply speed in a factor in only 4.3 percent of road accidents. Heather Mead, the Safety Camera Partnership's Communications Manager, says the figures are out of date. Well she would wouldn't she?

Those figures underline the fact that speed is a factor in only one in 20 accidents, which debunks the Safety Camera organisations claims.

Technology

She doesn't offer a "corrected" figure. And she says this isn't a "milk the motorist measure," yet we are to have six new "speed patrol cars," fitted with the latest camera technology, zooming around 122 of our roads. I put the cost of those "cameras" at half a million pounds a year, which is what the Safety Camera Partnership has to make, out of motorist, before they start contributing to Treasury coffers.

People will note that new (speed) road patrols can be financed out of new motoring fines, but there are no new (crime) road patrols, to counter our city's descent into a crime ridden decadent dump.

The reason? Government can mine gold from the motorist, whereas the lawless costs the Government (me and you) money.

We would all be a lot better off if this Government industriousness was applied to crime.

If motorists can be banned for a year after "four offences" why can't the lawless be automatically be jailed, for a year, after four offences?

N TAYLOR, Worcester.