POLICE and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan has announced a new survey to find out how the public want North Yorkshire’s roads to be policed this year, four years on from the last survey.

The announcement is part of a report before tomorrow’s Police and Crime Panel meeting, which stated the average number of traffic violations on the regions roads had dropped by more than 50 per cent in the last five years.

Research showed the average number of violations per hour in 2013 was 13.3 - from 38,018 offences - while in 2017, that figure had fallen to an average of 5.8 per hour - from 79,137 recorded offences that year.

Mrs Mulligan said previous feedback from the public said speeding and antisocial driving were concerning, “particularly in rural areas”, and the reduction in violations was largely due to the increased number of road safety cameras around North Yorkshire.

She said: “I am pleased to see that safety cameras are influencing driver behaviour. The whole point was to reduce speed and save lives, and with an independent study into the impact of driver safety, there is clear evidence to suggest both objectives are being met.

“The downside of affecting driver behaviour so effectively is that as people speed less, income from the vans reduces.

"So much so in the last year that the vans are struggling to break even. Given that, there can be no question at all that these vans are merely ‘cash cows’. Quite the opposite. Given the increase in vans and the changes to driver behaviour, and initiatives like Community Speed Watch, I want to find out people’s views on road safety by re-running the road safety survey I conducted in 2014.

"This will be later in the year, but everyone will be welcome to have their say and I will take that feedback very seriously.”