ANTI speed-camera culture has been lambasted by a leading transport expert. David Begg, director of the centre for transport policy at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and chair of the Government's commission for integrated transport, said that speed cameras were an integral part of saving lives on Britain's roads.

He said: 'Illegal and inappropriate speed kills about 1,200 people each year. A 4% cut in mean traffic speeds - less than 2mph in a 40mph limit - could mean an extra 1,000 people-a-year walking around alive than would otherwise be the case.' The news comes after Transport Minister John Spellar announced a controversial scheme allowing local authorities to keep money raised from fixed-penalty speeding fines, provided that the money was put back in to local road safety initiatives.

But Government statistics that claimed speed cameras reduce casualties by up to 40% have come under attack. Figures analysed by Fleet NewsNet's' sister title Motorcycle News revealed anomalies in four of the eight areas used to measure the success of the cash-for-cameras scheme. The study showed that 1999 recorded an untypically high year for road deaths, and that fatalities in 2000 (the year of the speed camera experiment) were little different from death levels in 1998 or 1997. For example, the number of road deaths in Essex was 84 in 1995 and 1996, 89 in 1997 and 76 in 1998. But in 1999, the year before the cameras went on trial, road deaths rose to 106. By the end of 2000, road deaths were back down to 86. And in Thames Valley figures actually rose from 150 in 1999 to 173 in 2000.

Gwyneth Horner, statistics lecturer at Cardiff University, was quoted as saying: 'This is how to lie with statistics. It is very naughty to claim this is making a big reduction when there is a blip in the figures. To attribute the reduction to speed cameras is not justifiable.'