In the last ten days, we have seen a shocking number of deaths on the roads in Oxfordshire. Nine people have lost their lives in separate accidents, raising the death toll for this year to 68, the highest for 16 years.

If nine people were to die in a single accident on the railway, it would be national, if not international, news.

Over the last 30 years, the number of deaths and serious injuries on Oxfordshire's roads has been falling. The reduction was driven first by road improvements, including sections of dual carriageway on dangerous stretches of road, junction improvements and traffic calming. The introduction of speed cameras helped to drive down deaths and injuries even further.

The downward trend has lost momentum in the last few years. This has been at a time when the main focus of road safety work is on speed enforcement.

We do not wish to devalue speed enforcement. It is an important part of road safety work. Speed enforcement is very cheap - at the very least self-financing. More expensive schemes, such as carriageway and junction improvements, are no longer pursued with the same vigour as they were ten to 20 years ago.

If we are to achieve further reductions in deaths and injuries on our roads then the right balance needs to be struck between speed enforcement and road improvements at accident black spots.