SIR, In his recent letter, Kevin Tea of the Cumbria Speed Camera Partnership quotes several statistics to justify the siting of their cameras. But far from "setting the record straight", his words actually serve to introduce further confusion!

Many readers must be wondering why this continual discrepancy exists. Repeatedly we see residents complaining that they have been saddled with speed cameras at sites where they know of no serious accidents, yet Mr Tea and his colleagues seem able to recite impressive lists of casualties. Perhaps the answer to this apparent paradox lies in the manner in which these statistics are collated.

In the general perception, a serious accident is generally perceived as one that involves a fatality, or perhaps someone suffering serious and permanent injury. On the face of it, the casualty statistics appear to support this, with camera sites being justified by a number of "Killed or Seriously Injured" (KSI) accidents during a qualifying period. But this definition is a massive source of confusion.

To the Speed Camera people, all sorts of things qualify as a serious injury. Space precludes a full definition here, but suffice it to say that recent statistics suggest that only half of such cases are admitted to hospital.

So what is the purpose of this interpretation?

It allows the proponents of Speed Cameras to paint a much blacker picture in order to justify their operations. To say that there have been "four Killed and Serious Injury accidents" at a location sounds hard-hitting, who could deny the need for speed enforcement? But in truth there may not have been a single fatality.

Taking the statistics at face value, it would seem that now we have speed cameras, some accidents have become more serious (leading to the sharp rise in fatalities), while other accidents have become less serious (resulting in the slight drop in "Serious Injury" accidents). Plainly it is ludicrous to suggest that cameras make accidents both more and less serious! The answer surely lies in the statistics themselves.

So in future, can we call upon Mr Tea to be a little more direct, and to speak to us in terms that we can all understand? If he wishes to gain public support for the siting of speed cameras, I would suggest that he explains their positioning with a clear history of fatalities caused by speeding.

John Thornley Kendal