Speeding not always reason
Oh come on Mr A C Mitchell of Telford, you accuse me of "misusing" figures to excuse speeding drivers, as you put it, when you have used an incorrect calculation to make your point and the so-called Safety Camera Partnership has been using dubious figures for years.
An average of 10 people die on our roads every day through a variety of causes. Latest figures show that just one-in-20 of collisions is due to drivers exceeding a speed limit.
That is one person every two days not two people per day as you calculate. Furthermore it is six times less than the three people each day used by Safety Camera Partnerships to justify their staff salaries being paid by drivers. I trust you are keeping up Mr Mitchell.
If we put the figures in perspective: 22 people die every two days as a result of accidents in the home; 580 people die every two days as a result of smoking; 13 people die on our roads every two days as a result of driver error including in particular the most basic "failure to look".
The emotive but misguided fascination with speed is killing people. "Speed Kills" has been promoted as a road safety strategy because speed is easy to measure, it bears a passing resemblance to a road safety strategy, it is self funding and it is readily accepted by the gullible. However it removes focus from the 13 people or so that die every two days as a result of basic error not involving excessive speed - and it is the problem of variable driver skills and attitudes that the authorities are failing to address.
I am not speed friendly Mr Mitchell, I am road safety friendly, as I'm sure you are.
K W Evans, Shrewsbury
