NO ONE would condemn outright any scheme that saves lives. But the one launched this week to virtually quadruple the number of speed cameras on Lancashire's roads must be more about raising millions of pounds through fines than protecting life and limb.

What we have here is the old "Speed kills" mantra on turbo-drive. For is it not the case that the plan to increase the number of cameras from 69 to 320 is based on the need for drivers to carry on speeding -- and, according to the logic of their preachy advocates, to carry on killing and maiming -- in order to provide the fines revenue for more cameras to be bought, installed and operated?

So that, er, eventually fewer drivers exceed the limit and fewer folk get killed and injured on the roads? Meantime, until we reach that happy state of spy camera overkill, carry on speeding, folks, until we have the fines money to pay for all those extra cameras.

Apart from this, the basic premiss that speed kills is much flawed. This plan in Lancashire to let the police keep revenue from speeding fines in order to buy cameras is also dressed up as saving the lives of 40 people who may be killed over the next three years by drivers going too fast.

This toll needs putting into context. Just 3,409 people were killed on Britain's roads last year -- a terrible, but tiny figure if you compare it, for example, even with the -- admittedly absurd -- notion of Britain's 31 million motorists making just one journey a year. The fact is that those millions of drivers make millions of journeys and, yet, our roads are the safest in Europe, apart from Sweden where the number of cars is about a tenth of that of the UK. Even then, speed is not the prime killer. A report by the Transport Research Laboratory shows it is a contributory factor in only seven per cent of accidents.

But, of course, the pious 'Speed kills' slogan makes a good excuse for 'effective' policing -- going for the soft target motorists and raking millions of revenue from them.