How very convenient to blame either the government or a minority of drivers on this issue. Anyone, that is, but you.

The real fact is that death on the roads is caused by you. That's right...you reading this article right now. You are speeding. You are driving too close to the car in front.

Simple.

30 in a 30, 40 in a 40 and so on. Yes...and that means 70 on the motorway - not 80...not 75...

Am I the only 30-something who actually sticks to the speed limit and leaves a 2 second stopping distance in front at all times?

Please stop killing each other. It's just silly and I'd like to see my kids grow old please.

(I'll be amazed if this gets on the website)

Craig Pay, Wigan, Lancs

yet another example of the nanny state taking over.look at the stats and you,ll see that during the war years there was more deaths from road traffic accidents than there are today,and how many tens of thousands more cars are there now.as long as there are humans in charge of cars there will be accidents and deaths.will these health and safety namby pambys only be happy when deaths are down to nil and we are all driving about at 5mph in electric cars.

tony shep, thornaby, teesside

Driver Education and regular assesments will lead to a safer road network. Most people take their driving test and that is the last thing they can be bothered with when it comes to being a driver and unfortunately the small period of time that they were actualy sitting the test the test was the best bit of driving they ever did. I have been driving Heavy Goods Vehicles for over 40 years and have to take regular assesments to keep up my driving standards and even though I may drive over 200,000 miles some years I still only have the same number of points allowed against my licence before I can be banned from driving so I along with many other proffesionals have to be good. However Joe average runs round like a lunatic ignoring the rules of the road and gets away wih keeping his licence because he does comparatively low mileage and due to a growing lack of police enforcement officers gets away with it.
Speed cameras and urban obstacle courses will not detect or stop the bad driver

Mick Bennett, Sheffield, S. Yorkshire

So lets get this straight. More camera's more and more pointless prosecutions of safe drivers but in fact road deaths don't go down? And some people here want to reinforce patently obvious failure? Are they serious?
Brunstrom's relentless crusade against decent people and the destruction of public support for law and order. Idiotic new laws about smoking in cars and mobile phone usage and for what? Nothing that's what.
Yet a supine acceptance of 5000+ deaths per annum (2000 more than on the roads) from hospital acquired infections and very little government action there. Why is that? Whats wrong with this picture. The short answer is Gordon Brown and stealth revenue raising. Frankly it's a national disgrace. Scamera's don't work...we're taxed unto and beyond death and the moneys wasted and our NHS hospitals are a disgrace.
Time for a new government with a bit of common sense.

Ethan, UK, UK

"The unit could also make broader recommendations about vehicle safety and traffic law enforcement."

They would do better round here if they told the councils to improve these roman cart tracks, that they call "A roads".

K. Woodhouse, Lincoln, England

Once again our government demonstrates its only real concern is revenue! They don't care about anyone's quality of life except their own. Rather than taking obvious steps that would make our lives happier and safer, they choose the most profitable route as long as it can be easily spun and sold to the public.

Rather than breaking the monopoly of the pollution belching automobile on our cities' streets (by making the roads safer and more pleasant for pedestrians), our government puts up speed traps, and increases car taxes.

It's the same with many other policies, an obvious one being tobacco. Instead of banning cigarette manufacturers from adding harmful chemicals that increase tobacco's addictiveness, they up the tax and plaster warnings about said harmful chemicals on the packs to sweeten the pill.

Am I the only one tired of being treated like a stupid gullible sheep?

Rich, Birmingham, UK

Sir

Regretfully this is an area where the real issue is ignored. The police do not just carry out an investigation to find negligence. The reality is that all road deaths merit full investigation to ascertain WHY the accident occurred, and all findings are passed on to the relevant roads authority especially where defects or failings are identified.
Unlike marine and air accidents, road accidents are rarely the result of mechanical defects but rather driver error. In other words each accident is unique. The driver has made an error of judgement.
Since the 1960's the police have attained a high standard which the rest of Europe would envy. That is an known fact in the accident reconstruction field.
I would urge caution before adopting a new system which would not only be costly in monetary terms. Road closures could see the country grind to a halt.
ACPO would be well advised to invest in road policing and the death toll would then fall. The simple but honest solution!

jc brown, bothwell, UK

The amount of money raised from speed cameras is realtivley low , about 900 million over 3 years. This contrasts with 2 billion costs a year for deaths and injuries. There are not enough random cameras and not enough roads for cyclists and pedestrians.

peter lee, Exeter, Devon

In many towns and cities you are very lucky if you ever manage to get up to 20mph and that in itself is the cause of many accidents, due to frustration and risk taking.
Has it occurred to advocates of reducing the speed limit down to 20mph that they are only one step removed from bringing back the man with the red flag who used to walk in front of cars to make sure they didn't exceed 5 mph !!
It is almost as good an idea as the one a Council in Yorkshire recently seriously proposed for switching streetlights off at night to save energy and reduce light pollution.

Les, Warrington, Cheshire

A camera misses the drunk,the drugged and the drivers with no documents whatsoever. They do not work!. Income is the only end result.The government needs to spend on the road system of this country and stop blameing everyone else.!

dave, telford, uk

Is it no coincidence that motorists are tending to ignore pedestrian crossings these days?
It could be that modern cars are so comfortable and easy to drive that motorists are lulled into a sense of euphoria - which doesn't extend to contemplating the potential dangers around them.

Maurice Smith, London,

In any other area of life, an unsafe machine would be replaced with something more safe. The unsafe machine is the roads themselves. White line markings at many intersections are nealy invisible. Major roads between towns should always be of the safer dual carriageway type when a certain traffic density is reached. The main road from Norwich to Ipswich is mostly a Roman campaign road is single carriageway and is highly accident prone. In major towns the dualling of roads is particularly to be encouraged with appropriate pathways to take pedestrians away from the roads. We were doing this once but in the mid eighties the road builders caved in to the environmental lobby and the idea of roads safe by design went out of the door.

Michael Clark, Great Yarmouth,

The one thing that I have never seen statistics like this do is break out the risk by type of vehicle. If deaths in cars have halved but deaths on motorcycles have quadrupled, as an example, then the problem is associated with motorcycles (or vans or bicycls or lorries or....) rather than with road use as a whole. I may be completely off track but just once it would be useful if somebody made some attempt to focus the real area of concern rather than just pandering to the "we hate roads" lobby.

Ian, Farnborough, UK

The graph that accompanied this article shows how futile, and inconvenient, any significant new measures would be. Despite an explosion in the number of cars and journeys, the death toll has fallen significantly since 1970. This shows that measures such as breath tests and seatbelts, along with safer car performance and designs, have had a worthwhile impact. But as economists would say, diminishing marginal returns have set in. The rate of fall in the death toll has levelled off. Further significant reductions are only likely to be achievable through very intrusive or unreasonable measures. It is often said that every life lost is worth saving - but to do that we should either not drive at all, or do so at 4 mph; where could the line be drawn? In truth, we have almost reached the line.

David Martin, Kent,

They need the cameras to pay for it all and then some.....
Pacts is full of unfit for purpose people who don’t drive 60k a year or cycle or walk.
They don’t know the first thing about road users.
Tip for them, speed doesn’t kill. Lack of ability and paying attention kills.
Raise the standards of driving.
Go and take a German driving test. You will be very surprised at the high standard.

Andy, Worcester, Worcs

Sure the government could splash some cash but UK motorists feel a divine right to push 40 on 30mph roads and are then surprised that we kill more kids with our cars than Europe. Think about taking some ownership when you speed.

Dave, Manchester, UK

Easy to sell the cameras to the public - "If you hit me at 40, I'll die" says the little girl.
Okay, so exactly how many deaths are caused by cars that are speeding, mounting the pavement and killing someone?
I suspect very very few indeed.
How about "If I'm dumb enough to walk out in front of a moving vehicle, I'll probably die" instead?

W Smith, Oldham,

Has it occured to anyone that the cause could well be the thousands of drivers who are on the road never having bothered to take a test? The standard of driving here in the south east where many of these live is far from adequate,

Dave, London, Inted Kingdom

It's always 'greater use of cameras' - the cheaper option, and the guaranteed way to target the blame to the motorist rather than the infrastructure..

Britain should take a tip from the Netherlands when in comes to designing roads that strategically manage traffic for safety.

But no, that''s not in our government's interest. What they want is another guaranteed source of income from the British public, not a huge bill for building.

Paul Ritchie, Southampton,