IN your Comment (LET, September 28), you do yourself a great disservice attacking the "grousers and complainers" against speed cameras as any review of your letters page would reveal that many contributions are from people such as myself who have not transgressed and whose principal concerns are based around the conviction that saturation of speed cameras does not benefit road safety and is, in fact, posing greater risks.

For Ian Bell, head of the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety, to use figures for all accidents over a four-month period as justification for this policy is nonsensical. For these figures to have any validity they must reflect the reduction, if any, in injuries caused by speed alone as this is the sole cause that speed cameras can address.

An objective conclusion can only be reached after a minimum 12-month period and all evidence from the areas which have completed 12-month trials has proved conclusively the ineffectiveness of this policy. These are the Department of Transport's figures, not mine.

One has to wonder at the grief that could have been prevented if only a fraction of the effort and expenditure had been targeted in areas that could have made a real difference.

Only a small percentage of accidents are caused by excess speed, a fact that the partnership is well aware of but choose for their own ends to ignore. For the partnership to use the statistics for all accidents to justify a camera location when they know that only a small percentage, if any, are speed-related is at best disingenuous and at worst downright dangerous as they are failing to deal with the actual cause of the accidents.

An example of this manipulation is Rossendale Road, Burnley, where most recent accidents have been due to driver error at the four major junctions and which is soon to be the recipient of a second camera. This fact is known to the partnership, so what agenda dictates the requirement for cameras?

The United Kingdom has one of the safest road systems in the world and it is right that we should strive for improvement. This will not be achieved whilst the policy makers are marching to the beat of their own interests and it is essential that a complete review of their effectiveness is undertaken to endure an objective and effective approach to road safety.

STEPHEN SADLER, Valley Drive, Padiham.