Dear Sir/Madam,

Today's editorial in defence of the "humble motorist" is typically irrational and, quite frankly, childish ("Assaults are up – on the poor old British motorist").

"For the two million people a year who are convicted of speeding alone, there are no victims", it claims. 

I appreciate that it requires a certain "intellectual" faculty, or a grasp of statistics, to comprehend, but speeding, whether involving an accident or not, does have victims: thousands of them every year, many of them fatal. 

Those who speed without being involved in an accident are fortunate, while those who are involved in an accident are unfortunate. Is it right that the unfortunate should be made scapegoats for the fortunate? Speed may not always be the cause of an accident, but it will almost certainly make matters worse, and sometimes be decisive in determining whether an accident is fatal or not.

Because speeding drivers can usually count on their good fortune not to be involved in a serious accident, they have little incentive (apart from a slap across the wrist if they are caught by a speed camera) to keep to the speed limit.

If breaking the speed limit were taboo, instead of being a cavalier's offence, the number of deaths and serious accidents on our roads would drop dramatically.

For the author of today's editorial, saving a few hundred lives every year (many of them innocent children) is apparently not as important as the "humble" motorist's freedom to break the speed limit at his own discretion.

I would like to see him try and look a mother and father in the eyes who have lost their child to a speeding driver and tell them that "speeding alone has no victims".