Are speed cameras crucial to the country's road safety or a cynical ploy to extract money from the motorist and an assault on personal freedom? And what would their Dutch inventor make of all the fuss? Paul Kelso investigates

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Thursday January 15 2004

In the article below we said "speeding on British roads ... causes an average of 10 fatalities a day". That is the average number of all road fatalities per day, not of those related to speeding.

Maurice Gatsonides never paid much attention to speed limits. Given that the Dutchman raced motor bikes and rally cars for more than 40 years, covering more than one million competitive miles in the process, most of them flat out, that should come as no surprise. There is more than a little irony, then, in the legacy the rangy "Gatso" left to motoring; the speed camera.

In addition to being a notoriously competitive and tenacious driver, Gatso was an engineer - and a good one. During the German occupation of the Netherlands he invented a gas generator that kept Holland moving despite the Nazis' appropriation of the majority of fuel stocks. His most enduring invention, however, was the Gatsometer, a device that calculates speed by firing radar at an object and measuring how long it takes to bounce back. Gatsonides used the device to help him work out how to go faster round corners, but it now makes his family firm a fortune through its use as a tool to slow people down.

Given the profits made by Gatso Holdings BV, it is fair to assume Gatsonides was pleased by the near-ubiquity of his ingenious invention on British roads prior to his death in 1998 at the age of 87. But he would probably be surprised to find his device had spawned one of the most divisive political debates of our time. In one of his rare public comments on his invention, Gatsonides revealed a relaxed attitude to being flashed by his own invention. "I am often caught by my own speed cameras and find hefty fines on my doormat," he said. "Even I can't escape my own invention because I love speeding."

A growing lobby shares Gatso's last sentiment, but is far less sanguine at the sight of speeding fines dropping through the letterbox. Their opposition to the use of cameras as a key plank of road-safety policy looks set to become a touchstone issue at the next election, one as potentially damaging to the government as the fuel demonstrations in 2000.

The growing influence of this lobby became clear on Monday, when the government announced plans to add a £5 surcharge to the £60 fine already levied on motorists caught by cameras to fund compensation to victims of crime. For a seemingly minor piece of legislation, it prompted an extraordinary reaction.

The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail all led with the story, ignoring the benefits to victims (a group all three publications regularly champion) and focusing instead on what they characterised as another example of stealthy taxation. The Mail called the proposed levy an outrage, and described speeding on British roads, which causes an average of 10 fatalities a day, as a "victimless crime".

Other papers have been equally exercised by the spread of roadside metal boxes. The Sun has campaigned for "sneaky" cameras to be removed, and last Sunday the News of the World revealed its latest specialist correspondent, Camwoman, a catsuit-clad reporter who pledged to spring to the aid of "Britain's beleaguered motorists".

Online, the opposition to Gatsos is even clearer. There is a flourishing industry offering devices that warn motorists they are approaching a Gatso, and numerous websites offer talkboards where the evils of speed cameras are debated in an atmosphere of mutual outrage.

At least one secretive organisation is devoted to the anonymous destruction of cameras. Motorists Against Detection (Mad) celebrates each camera that is put out of action with an image of the battered, torched or bent Gatso standing forlornly by the road. Gatsos and the policy makers, local authorities and police forces that install them attract a level of vitriol their inventor could never have envisaged. A statement from Mad's spiritual leader, Captain Gatso, indicates the depth of feeling. "We represent an unheard band of motorists and bikers fed up with this continuing proliferation of speed cameras, bus lane, parking and now congestion cameras. We are fed up with lining the pockets of police forces and councils as a stealth tax revenue-raising scheme."

Captain Gatso's splenetic opposition is not unique. In common with the anti-fuel tax lobby, several groups campaign and coalesce opinion online, most of them advocating more legal forms of protest. The anti-camera lobby also has the support of the mainstream motoring groups, including the RAC and the AA. Both have been vocal in their opposition to the use of cameras for taxation, and argue that the current policy risks alienating the majority of motorists to the point where they lose respect for motoring law.

What these opposition groups share is an extraordinarily passionate opposition to cameras. In essence they take the view that the use of cameras to enforce speed amounts to a money-making scam that has a minimal effect on road safety.

The bulk of the 5,000 speed cameras currently operating (estimates range from 4,500 - the Department of Transport - to 9,000 - the anti-lobby) are installed in partnership between local authorities and the police. The revenue raised is passed to the Department of Transport, who reimburse the authority and the police force for the cost of maintaining the camera, and pass the surplus to the Treasury. Last year that surplus was £7m out of a total revenue of £73m.

The opposition groups argue that cameras are deliberately placed where they will generate most money rather than in locations where speed contributes to a high accident rate. They claim that an over-reliance on cameras has led the police to reduce traffic patrols, and that speed is not an indicator of safety. Crucially, they view fines as a tax, rather than a fine levied to enforce the law.

At the heart of the numerous and complex statistics, examples and arguments deployed by the anti-camera lobby, however, is the issue of personal freedom, and what constitutes criminality. It is here that speed cameras should cause most concern to a government already uneasy in its dealings with the motoring lobby. A similar opposition was mobilised at the end of the 1970s, when the prospect of legislation to make seatbelts compulsory was first mooted, and once again the power of the car as a symbol of personal liberty has been invoked.

It is a curiously British debate. In the US, the land of the free, the automobile and speed limits as low as 55mph, speed cameras are used in just four states. They have attracted opposition but nothing like the level of direct action and fervour apparent in the UK. But if the the anti-camera lobby demonstrates anything, it is that a signifi cant minority of Middle Britain, the soft right that helped Tony Blair into power, feels unjustly criminalised every time a fine lands on the mat.

The Association of British Drivers, a group with 3,000 full members run by Brian Gregory, whose day job is in the chemical industry, is the leading group opposed to cameras. Inspired after reading the Road Traffic Act and spotting the potential for abuse, Gregory says the emphasis on speed cameras amounts to an abuse of personal liberty.

"This whole question is about freedom personally and freedom of movement. In my view the motor car has contributed more to individual freedom than any invention in human history," he says. "We are opposed to the reliance on speed cameras because it represents persecution of ordinary hard-working people based on completely unsound dogma. It is an abuse of civil liberties that does nothing to improve road safety.

"Speed is not the major cause of accidents in this country. Dangerous driving and poor road design contribute more to death and injury. The other effect is that people are now so paranoid and fixated with cameras that they spend more time looking at the speedo than the road, and they are more likely to have accidents."

The ABD and other groups profess to be interested in road safety, and cite a levelling-off of the year-on-year reduction in fatalities as evidence that speed cameras do not work. According to the Department of Transport, however, they do; its figures for 2002-03 show a 35% reduction in death or injuries where cameras have been introduced. The anti-camera lobby counters that this is coincidence and that accidents are happening elsewhere, an argument refuted by Benjamin Heydecker, professor of transport studies at UCL. "Our studies show that cameras work to reduce death and serious injuries. The anti-camera groups select statistics that fit their arguments."

The tenacity of the anti-camera lobby has been felt at firsthand by Mary Williams, chief executive of the road safety campaign group Brake. An advocate of cameras where speed limits are correct, she founded Brake after her mother and partner were killed in separate road accidents. She was the subject of aggressive comments on a message board linked to the ABD website, including suggestions that she be burned at the stake and that her brake lines be cut.

Surveys by Mori, the AA and the BBC indicate that the majority of people are in favour of cameras, but Williams believes the anti-camera lobby exerts undue influence thanks to a pliant press and timidity on the government's part.

"The anti-camera lobby is able to exert a disproportionate influence over the road-safety debate for several reasons," she says. "They misuse statistics and make great causal leaps that the figures do not back up. They are also dealing with a largely favourable media. The issues raised by Gatso's box of tricks will certainly dog the government until the next election."

"It is entirely typical of this government that it thinks it can spin away until the public is convinced," says Gregory. "It's called the Goebbels Principle, because it only works if you can suppress the people who see through the lies. Unfortunately for the government they won't suppress us. We are not going to go away until the government does what we want."

Gotcha! The facts

* The first cameras appeared in 1992 following the Road Traffic Act 1991

* They were introduced on a mass scale in 1995

* The cost of a fixed camera is about £32,000

* Britain's first privately funded speed cameras went into operation in Flitwick, Beds, after villagers raised £18,000 in 1996

* 5,000 cameras led to an estimated 2m £60 fines and three penalty points in 2003 (automatic loss of licence after 12 points)

* Speed cameras raise £17m a year for the Treasury

* Thames Valley made a record-breaking £4.6m in fines generated by cameras in 2003. In second place was Northants, followed by Lincolnshire and Essex

* 85% of people believe speed cameras save lives

Luc Torres