With the debate on speed limits and road safety hotting up, I would like to point out some common misconceptions - if not corrected, these stand to cost local taxpayers thousands of pounds and even lives.

Misleading advertising from groups like the Council for the Protection of Rural England (e.g.) claims that someone is killed on a country road every 45 minutes, and that speed is the primary cause. This is not borne out by the Government's own Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), who checked almost 2,800 road accidents across the UK and found excessive speed was the cause in only four per cent and a factor in another three per cent.

Our safest roads are in fact the fastest - i.e., motorways.

In traffic accidents involving the death or serious injury of a pedestrian, the main responsibility lay with the pedestrian in 84 per cent of cases.

How many of them could have been prevented had the Government diverted adequate resources to educating road users on how to identify the hazards and deal with them?

Unfortunately the "solution" often takes the form of expensive speed enforcement cameras in inappropriate locations and agitation for lower speed.

My group, the Association of British Drivers, represents responsible road users (all of whom are drivers or riders but also pedestrians some of the time). They come from all walks of life, but are united in the belief that the £33,000,000,000 we pay to the Exchequer each year in road user taxes is not properly reinvested.

For our fact sheet exploring the vital issues, please write to me at: P.O. Box 2228, Kenley, Surrey. CR8 5ZT.

BRIAN J GREGORY, M.A. (Oxon).,M.Sc.

Chairman