Cumbria Police have come up with some innovative ideas to tackle foot-to-the-floor motorists who flout speed limits with potentially fatal consequences.

One of the most unusual ideas is to loan speed guns costing £1,700 to parish councils and, possibly, to other members of the public.

Volunteers would be trained to use the guns and left to clock speeding drivers with the device, writing down offenders' number plates, which would then be passed on to police.

For a first offence, a driver would receive a warning letter from the police; a second offence would prompt a

strongly-worded note and police would be mobilised to monitor the person's driving. If caught speeding again by police, the driver would be prosecuted.

Arnside is set to be the first parish council to pilot the scheme, which - if successful - might be rolled out across the county to other interested councils and individuals.

While readings taken by, say, a parish councillor alone will not be sufficient to support court action, some people may raise eyebrows at the thought of civilians out on the streets armed with speed guns and with the power to bring down police wrath on their fellow citizens.

But this is little different from the concept of neighbourhood watch schemes, which have successfully used volunteers to serve as a deterrent to crime in local communities for a number of years.

And parish councillors know their villages at grass-roots level they are likely to be even more aware than police of local problems and could specifically target speeding hotspots.

Certainly if civilians using speed guns can reduce the

number of lives lost in road accidents, then few people should complain.

And Cumbria has been identified as having one of the worst records for road deaths in the country. In response to

Government targets, Cumbria Constabulary wants to see a 40 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road crashes to 118 by 2010.

It has developed a number of new initiatives to reduce road accidents. One eye-catching scheme is for relatives of road-crash victims to accompany police to speeding hot-spots to confront drivers travelling too fast with personal tales of the occasionally tragic consequences of speed.

One imagines that a speeding driver would think twice about speeding again after such a harrowing conversation.

Other ideas including impounding vehicles from motorists caught flouting the law, particularly by dangerous

driving.

Excessive speeding and bad driving are unacceptable and Cumbria Police are to be congratulated on an imaginative approach to tackling this social menace.

April 25, 2003 12:30