MOST PEOPLE don’t like speed cameras.

Getting caught doing 37mph in an empty village street at midnight seems so unjust.

Some cameras like the one on Rushmere Road are on hills, so to keep to 30mph on that road you have to brake continually all the way from the top of the hill.

On motorways virtually everyone travels at 80mph, so it has been quite surprising to find that for about 10 miles on the M1 near Nottingham there are speed cameras on the bridges (you have been warned!). They must be raking it in!

So perhaps you see the speed camera as yet another device to extract yet more money from the motorist, already reeling from the latest fuel increases, irrespective of Boy George’s decision to drop the proposed increase in tax on fuel.

But the statistics don’t lie, and the statistics prove that speed cameras cut speeding, cut accidents and cut deaths – see the chart on the right.

Road deaths are one of the most appalling plagues of our time. If it were an illness we’d be crying out for a vaccine.

In 2009 (latest national figures available) 26,912 people were killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents. We all worry about heart disease or cancer, but we’re far more likely to be killed or injured in a car on the way to the hospital.

Money is tight and the Conservative County council, who did not prepare for the bad times by saving money, have had to slash and burn services and have threatened to sack 900 people.

I know that decisions on spending cuts are so hard – a young woman with adult disabled children told me last week that the Council will no longer be collecting her used nappies. Clearly some of the cuts that have had to be made have a terrible impact on ordinary people like her.

But however much people are suffering through the loss of a services provided by the county council, there surely can’t be anything worse than losing a child, a husband, a wife, a parent in a road accident.

The turning off of the speed cameras won’t have any impact for a while, as the cameras are still there and not everyone realises that they have been turned off.

However, gradually the speeds will increase and the accidents will increase.

As the casualties rise and some more people are killed, I wonder how the councillors who made the decision to turn them off will sleep at night? In my opinion they will have blood on their hands.

See also: “Speed cameras across Oxfordshire have been switched back on eight months after they were turned off” BBC News 1 April 2011.