ANY day now, we will be greeted by the launch of the seasonal crackdown by Lancashire Police against drink-driving - an overkill exercise that usually entails thousands of drivers being stopped to net the tiny handful of idiots who still drive over the limit.

But, now, on top of this annual excess, we are to have year-round harassment of motorists, based on a supposition that Lancashire's highways are knee deep in road-accident gore for which speeding drivers are to blame. And that in order to end this carnage we need a 'zero tolerance' approach to the speedsters and the county requires a staggering 320 speed cameras -- the second highest number in the country -- in order to catch them.

An extra 40-odd of them are to be dotted around East Lancashire as part of a government-led drive against speeding.

But if the notion is that speed kills, just how many are being slaughtered? Well, given that the target of this camera-led crackdown is a reduction of 1,380 deaths and injuries over the next five years, there might seem much virtue in the anti-speeding campaign.

But, hey, how many are actually being killed and maimed at present in Lancashire? The latest figures -- those of the self-same government that is inspiring this purge -- show that just 65 people were killed on the county's roads last year and slightly over 1,000 seriously injured. Now, divide that by three -- as the government blames speeding for one in three road deaths -- and we have 22 people killed and at most 350 seriously hurt out of a population of 1.49 million and heaven knows how many zillion car journeys a year.

That's carnage? Give over!

And it's hardly as if Lancashire's roads are race-tracks anyway. For even the government's statistics show that while two-third of drivers exceed 30mph limits, less than a third are going over 35mph and while a quarter break 40mph limits, just seven per cent are doing over 45mph.

So what's the point of spending £10million on this anti-speeding campaign? Silly me thinks it would make far more sense and be far more effective in saving lives if the money were spent on fighting real big killers like heart disease or breast cancer in Lancashire instead of speed cameras.