ROAD safety bosses today defended their speed camera policy after new figures showed an increase in road deaths last year.

Police statistics show 66 people were killed in 62 accidents in 2002 but that figure rose to 88 people killed in 84 crashes in 2003.

Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety has argued that, despite the figures, there is a need for the cameras.

But road safety pressure groups have said it is simply more proof the cameras are ineffective, claiming the increase is part of a national trend.

A spokesman for the Association of British Drivers said: "Speed cameras don't work.

"But it isn't only Lancashire that has the problem. In Suffolk there were 43 deaths in 2002 but in 2003 there were 59. There are probably others which we don't know about.

"We have estimated that if we continued with the old style of road policing - education, engineering and enforcement - we would have see something like 5,000 less deaths on the road over the last 10 years."

But the partnership argued that the figures are misleading if just one category of accident is picked out. They claim the total number of accidents across the county has fallen from 8,261 to 7,343 in the last 12 months.

Police figures for the last five years show that patterns of road accident injuries have remained nearly constant. But John Davies, acting project manager for the Lancashire Road Safety Project, said: "The figures we have got are from 1987 where there were 161 fatalities. If you look at the fatals now, we had 88 last year. We can say they have come down quite considerably.

"The same police figures show a fall in Lancashire's total number of crashes, including serious crashes, and the total number of road accident injuries, including serious injuries, is down by 11 per cent. Cameras have contributed to this welcome trend."

Lancashire will have 320 cameras by April but most were installed over 2002 and 2003 and many will not conform to Government guidelines coming in this April. Critics therefore believe half of East Lancashire's cameras should be pulled down.

But Mr Davies said: "We are continually monitoring the effectiveness of our cameras but our results are showing their introduction, combined with other road safety initiatives, is reducing casualties and speeds."