A ROAD safety campaign spear headed by the Cambs Times and Wisbech Standard is being praised by road safety chiefs for a drop in accidents on Fenland roads. The number of injury accidents in the district dropped by 16 per cent last year - the largest decr

A ROAD safety campaign spear headed by the Cambs Times and Wisbech Standard is being praised by road safety chiefs for a drop in accidents on Fenland roads.

The number of injury accidents in the district dropped by 16 per cent last year - the largest decrease in the county.

Provisional figures also show that in the five months after the start of the Cambs Times/Wisbech Standard Fenland Road Safety Campaign (November to March) supported by Cambridgeshire County Council, injury accidents have fallen by just over 20 per cent compared with the same period the year before.

That is a fall of 143 to 113 injury accidents. The number of accidents where people were killed or seriously injured dropped by 38 per cent for the same period

Cambridgeshire County Council Head of Road Safety David Frost, said: "I want to thank all road users in Fenland for doing their bit to see this percentage drop in the number of accidents.

"Work by all agencies, including campaigns run by the Cambs Times and Wisbech Standard have also played their part."

The latest figures just out show, compared with 2007, there were 16 per cent less accidents and 22 per cent less people killed on Fenland roads and 14 per cent less fatal accidents.

For the whole of 2008 Fenland saw a 9 per cent decrease in the number of accidents where people were killed or seriously injured compared with a 1 per cent increase in Peterborough, 8 per cent fall in South Cambridgeshire, 10 per cent decrease in Cambridge, 12 per cent drop in Huntingdonshire and 21 per cent decline in East Cambridgeshire. That equates to a 4 per cent drop in the number of people killed or seriously injured in Fenland.

Mr Frost said that last year there was also a large hike in fuel costs and motorists were either driving less in total or more carefully when they were travelling.

"We hope drivers will continue to see the benefits of driving more carefully and there is obviously more we can do and we will continue to look at ways of reducing accidents even further," he said.

" We will be particularly looking at reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured on Fenland roads.