ON the brink of the go-ahead for a series of revolutionary road safety measures copied from Australia - including mass breath tests and strict enforcement of speed limits - Lancashire Police are, perhaps, driving into the unknown.

For though this scheme is claimed to have dramatically reduced drink-driving and road accidents in the state of Victoria where it was pioneered, its value in this country may not be as great if motorists come to regard it as an overkill measure that makes them feel hounded by the police.

There are several reasons why this could occur.

To begin with, the incidence of drink-driving is already low. A generation has grown up with the breathalyser - so that now only a small core of motorists are offenders.

And though vigilance on road safety remains vital, Britain's roads are vastly safer now than they were in the 1920s when the number of vehicles was a tenth of the 30 million cars on them today. The numbers of deaths and serious injuries are at record lows - so that, after Norway, this country is the safest place in the world in which to drive.

This hardly adds up to a case for a crackdown entailing "booze buses" prowling Lancashire to conduct mass breath testing or reducing what little leeway drivers have for creeping over the speed limit and then, we are told, throwing the book at them in court.

If the necessity for this kind of action cannot be demonstrated by the figures in the same way that burglary - with victims numbering more than 80 per cent of every 1,000 people - cries for a crackdown, then the result may a backlash for the community's relationship with the police. This was put to the test by the last Christmas and New Year blitz in Lancashire on drink-driving in which more than 32,000 motorists were stopped at roadside checkpoints in one month, with just five failing breath tests. It was hailed by the police as proof of the scheme's success - whereas it might also have been evidence of a huge waste of police time and resources that only served to alienate motorists.

When already they have plenty of other crime to deal with, in going for more of this kind of thing on a lasting basis - and unlike the police in Australia, bereft of legal force for random breath-testing - Lancashire Constabulary needs to proceed with caution.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.