Sir - When I started writing this letter on December 17, we had had 59 deaths on Oxfordshire's roads this year. In the few days it's taken me to finish, there have been six more fatalities.

It is also despite new 50mph limits, 30 limits, 20 limits, 107 cameras, plans for more and plans for another raft of yet more 50 limits. That's despite calming schemes, humps, bumps and chicanes. That's despite forests of new signs littering the roadside. That's despite ugly red patches slapped on the road screaming SLOW.

What more do we need to show us that external controls like this do not and cannot work to prevent accidents? The county's ultra-low 50mph limits have not prevented crashes on the A415. Their ultra-low 50mph limits and cameras have not prevented deaths on the A420. Their new 40mph limits and speed cameras on the A40 have not prevented deaths.

When I ride these roads and stick to the limits, people tailgate me, flash and hoot me to move over. More seriously, they attempt overtakes that are potentially lethal out of sheer, maddened frustration. Of course, they shouldnt. They should behave and be compliant with the limits. But in the real world - not Council Land - they don't.

The council seems to believe it can set a limit for every hazard, so we have limits that change constantly To comply with them precisely, means, in effect, driving by numbers. This road safety policy is just like painting by numbers. A very poor facsimile of the real thing.

We have now got to the point in Oxfordshire where the cure is worse than the illness. We urgently need to review the causes of the crashes that have claimed so many lives and develop a road safety policy that works.

Mark McArthur-Christie, Bampton