MY driving licence is one of those old green ones. Issued in 1976 it's falling to bits, but if it holds together it is valid until 2016, and I see no reason to change it meanwhile.

Except for the fact that when I pull it out of my wallet, the first thing that greets me is those three points.

"SP30" it says speeding above the 30 mph limit.

I can still remember the sense of injustice I felt when the camera flashed in my rear-view mirror and an even greater sense of unfairness when I got the fixed penalty notice through the letter box a few weeks later.

After all, it had been early on Sunday morning. There was no other traffic around and I was "only" doing 48 mph.

However, I was guilty. There was no point arguing. So I paid up, grumbling.

But I also did something else. I modified my driving behaviour.

I was not only on the look-out for other speed cameras, but my anxiety to avoid another three points and then another, meant that I slowed down in built-up areas generally and I was more careful on unrestricted roads and motorways. I therefore became a safer driver.

All this was a long time ago in November 1993. But for a further four years, until I became Home Secretary and needed close protection, I drove a great deal.

I drive myself only a little these days and, happily, the three points have expired and I've got no more.

So when I see newspaper campaigns on behalf of the "downtrodden" motorist I have some sympathy, but never too much, and now it's fast evaporating.

For every motorist is a son or daughter, and many are mothers and fathers too.

The inconvenience and occasional annoyance of speed cameras seems to me to be a small price to pay for keeping our children safer.

"You do all realise that together we've saved a class full of children", Graham Burgess, Executive Director of Blackburn with Darwen Council told a (packed) residents meeting in Little Harwood I was chairing last Friday.

"What does he mean?", I thought.

Then he explained. Between 1994 and 1998 an average of 35 children were killed or seriously injured every year on the roads in the borough.

Major road safety improvements have since been carried out and last year that figure was down to 11.

Eleven too many children killed or seriously injured but 24 fewer than that average figure in the mid-90s.

Big statistics often go over all our heads, because they don't seem to relate to our daily experience.

Mr Burgess's way of presenting the figures, on the other hand, really went home.

There was a brief silence in the hall as people digested what they had been told.

And just think over an eight year period, the child casualties saved if this improvement is sustained amount to a reasonable-sized junior school.

Yes, those speed cameras you don't spot until it's too late and you're flashed are aggravating but a child's legs or arms, and whole future, is worth much more.