Best way to police dangerous driving

I am writing to register my bafflement at Theresa May’s recent campaign to increase minimum sentencing for anyone convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.

I am baffled for three reasons: i) does she really think that people who are drunk driving/speeding will be thinking clearly about the impact on their lives of being convicted? If she does, I'm going to suggest she has very limited contact with drunks and people who are late for meetings. Increasing sentencing is never going to be an effective deterrent for this crime.

ii) If she wishes to reduce road deaths, then why on earth did she vote to slash the police budget to such an extent that the local police force don’t do any traffic enforcement anymore (not a pop at the police, a pop at austerity)? Can anyone remember the last time they saw a drink driving roadstop or even a mobile speed stop in Maidenhead? When I learnt to drive in the late 90s you would see one or the other every other week and it kept drivers honest and law abiding. That hasn't been the case since 2010 and you can tell with the terrible, dangerous standard of driving on the roads.

iii) Finally if she wants to reduce road deaths in an efficient manner, then increasing spending on road safety, rather than endless sentences is the way forward. Let’s say you imprison a 30-year-old drug driver who has killed a pedestrian, the cost of keeping them in jail for the next 40 years is approximately £2million (£50k for 40 years); how much extra traffic enforcement could that have paid for instead? How many lives could it have saved?

RICHARD NODEN Pinkneys Road

Maidenhead