THE headline Dilemma facing safety experts on last week s story about the latest fatalities on the Forty Foot Bank should surely have read Failure of safety experts to act on riverside killer road . How can they have a dilemma? They have never made a c

THE headline 'Dilemma facing safety experts' on last week's story about the latest fatalities on the Forty Foot Bank should surely have read 'Failure of safety experts to act on riverside killer road'.

How can they have a dilemma? They have never made a choice from two or more alternatives; they have never suggested one workable option to rectify the Forty Foot problem.

Over the past five years this road has seen a yearly average of six accidents, with two of those vehicles entering the river each year.

Mark Kemp, Cambridgeshire Council director of highways and access, tells us that schemes from a £900,000 budget have to compete on the basis of potential accident reduction and that a potential of one reduction in accidents per year, however serious, would not score very highly.

Had they acted in a more realistic manner by looking at reality and not theory, some of those unfortunate people would be alive today.

We are told each fatal accident costs the authorities £1.4million. The score would have looked very different with savings of about £7million over the past five years along the Forty Foot Bank; had words been turned into realistic action.

Speeding has become a disease. Reducing speed and preventing overtaking should not be a difficult task on this five-mile stretch.

It is inconceivable to think that councillors have ignored their own people who told us in August 2005 that 79 per cent of Cambridgeshire's fatal accidents occur on rural roads with speed limits over 40mph.

This problem has been ongoing for more than a decade. If our County Councillors do not get their act together, more lives will continue to be lost to the murky waters of the Forty Foot Drain.

REG WENN, Acre Fen, Chatteris