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, for example, 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, which 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 - 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, in far too many inappropriate locations, the 'solution' takes the form of expensive speed enforcement cameras 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 at least some of the time). They come from all walks of life, but are united in the belief that the £33 billion we pay each year in road-user taxes is not properly reinvested.

For our fact sheet exploring the vital issues please write to me.

BRIAN J GREGORY, Chairman, Association of British Drivers, PO Box 2228, Kenley, Surrey, CR8 5ZT.

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