KILL your speed or kill someone - that was the stark message from a new campaign group after 16 people died and more than 1,000 were injured on Blackpool's roads in the past year.

This traffic carnage also cost the taxpayer up to a whacking £30m in insurance pay-outs, damage to vehicles and hospital treatment.

Yesterday (May 12) the West Coast Roadsafe Partnership - a new regional forum aiming to bring down the accident toll - launched the Take Your Time in '99 campaign at Blackpool Stanley Park Sports Centre.

Lancashire police, Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde councils, Lancashire County Council and NW Lancashire Health Authority were all at the launch - and the police brought along their latest equipment in the Kill Your Speed armoury.

It included high-tech laser-powered speed detection cameras and unmarked chase cars complete with stingers to stop dangerous drivers.

Blackpool highways chairman Roy Fisher said: "We are determined to put the brakes on speeding drivers who recklessly run the risk of committing motoring mayhem."

At 35mph, motorists are twice as likely to kill someone as at 30mph he pointed out.

"If a child runs out into the path of a car and is three car lengths ahead of the driver, at 20mph an alert motorist in a mordern car can stop before hitting the child. At 30mph the car would hit the child and at 40mph a motorist would not even have time to hit the brakes."

Lancashire highways chairman Coun Richard Toon said: "We need to work together to get the message across that inappropriate speeding is socially unacceptable."

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