SIR,

May I applaud and echo Mr Peter Martin's excellently worded letter regarding speed enforcement tactics in our town?

I am a retired traffic patrol officer from the Met where, intending no disrespect to my erstwhile colleague in Dixton Road, we enforced speed limits on our police motorcycles by riding them.

We found that method of road policing highly effective in detecting a variety of offences such as no insurance, disqualified driving, careless/ dangerous driving – the list is long.

We did use 'speed guns', but only in identified collision 'hot spots'.

Hands up all those who have witnessed a collision in Dixton Road. We mostly carried out speed enforcement via pursuit, ie we rode behind a speeding driver for a minimum distance of three tenths-of-a-mile at an even following distance, reasoning that if the driver did not use the rear view mirror to spot the yellow clad figure on a big red and white motorcycle with blue lights and slow down, he or she deserved three points on their licence.

The Dixton Road and Hereford Road speed traps are oddly alike in that they both police traffic moving away from a built up area rather than towards it.

One would imagine speed enforcement in Hereford Road would naturally target drivers speeding into the town and towards a school rather than the other way around, likewise in Dixton Road where traffic is 'policed' as it moves away from all the potential dangers of a town environment towards a dual carriageway.

Mr Martin stated that the Dixton Road police motorcyclist "may have been more profitably deployed helping resolve the chaos" on the nearby A40 at the time he saw him.

You are absolutely correct Mr Martin, he would certainly have been better deployed there, but not profitably so.

I'm afraid that blatant revenue gathering has now elbowed road safety and common sense road policing well out of the way.

P Thomas

(Monmouth)