IN reply to the article on speed cameras (LET, January 8). Traffic speed restrictions are set by the responsible authorities under a law designed to protect life and limbEvery year the 3,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of maimings on our roads are equivalent to the casualty list of a moderate sized war. Speed limitations are essential if casualties are to be kept down.

All laws carry penalties for those who break them. Before you punish law-breakers you have to catch them. In the case of those who break speed restrictions, speed cameras are very effective. When they become so effective that we hear a howl of protest from those caught breaking the law, it should cause us no distress at all. The bigger the howl, the more effective the law enforcement and the safer our roads.

Most of our restrictions are in populated areas and yet we have the worst record in Europe for the killing of children on the roads.

As an average, law-abiding citizen, I am deeply distressed by this campaign to get rid of speed cameras. We are told that the cameras are there to make money, but the only people they make money from are those who break the law. !

On coming to Blackburn, I was told about these awful machines. I drove more carefully as a result. I also noticed other drivers proceeding more cautiously -- wonderful! The only people who hate cameras are those who demand the right to break the law and in doing so increase danger to others.

Campaigners will protest that they are superb and mature drivers and therefore there is no need to supervise them. If they were mature citizens they wouldn't wish to arrogantly claim a right to be above the law.A child who runs out in front of a great driver doing 40mph instead of 30mph is dead.

I'm afraid it is all part of a malaise in our society -- arrogant contempt for the law. A refusal to accept responsibility for ones own actions. It's not my fault for breaking the law, it's that camera that's to blame.

Campaigners say it's bad to ignore guidelines that say people have to die on a stretch of road before a camera should be allowed. Are they beyond understanding the concept of accident prevention? Is their right to lawless driving so great that people have to actually die before its overridden?

We hear a lot about the anti-social behaviour of the young -- noise, pollution, litter, threatening behaviour etc. How strange that anti-social behaviour becomes respectable once you get behind the wheel of a car!.

Dear Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety, please don't be intimidated by a campaign founded on neither sense nor morality. Do all you can to increase the number of cameras. I would rather hear the groans of frustrated speeders than the groans of traffic accident victims.

And if a camera catches me breaking the speed limit, I hope I will hang my head in shame and not thrash around trying to find someone else to blame.

The Rev DAVID KENNEDY, Vicar of St Aidan's Mill Hill, Blackburn.