I CAN'T tell you how many times I've been driving at 30mph through any number of Devon villages, only to be tailgated by some impatient driver.

It happens so often that I sometimes feel like the only driver who obeys the speed limits.

In fact, I barely notice the queue of traffic building up behind me anymore, or the cars in front of me disappearing into the distance at speeds well in excess of the limit.

The only time I really notice something different about the cars around me these days, is when, like me, they are obeying the speed limit.

It's so unusual that it grabs my attention.

Often a car will overtake me at speed within a 30mph zone, only for me to catch up with it outside the village, or watch it turn off the road a few hundred yards later.

It puzzles me why they bother.

I also find it bewildering that many motorists react with such anger to speed restrictions.

They seem to think it's their right to break the law and drive at whatever speed they want.

As a consequence they concoct all sorts of bizarre arguments. They rant on about speed cameras being a form of stealth tax, or argue that it's safer to drive faster.

This is rubbish. How can anyone dispute the logic of driving more slowly past a school, on a dangerous stretch of road, near shops, or through residential streets? I don't hear them arguing their right to assault someone or shoplift. They seem to think that other laws are fine but those limiting speed are not.

And in recent years I've been puzzled by the lack of police action, and have written that they seem cowed by the backlash against speed cameras.

But now, hallelujah, the police are starting to do something about it.

Perhaps they are responding to the results of survey after survey in which people have told them that speeding cars are one of the biggest problems where they live.

Last year the police conducted a speed survey on just one road in Tiverton and registered an astonishing 30,000 cars breaking the speed limit in just seven days.

Now they are looking for recruits to join an admirable new scheme, Speed Watch, whereby members of the public are trained to use speed monitoring equipment and record the details of drivers who break the limits in residential areas.

They work without a police presence but they don't wave anyone down.

The information they record simply allows the police to send speeding drivers a warning letter on their first offence, to visit them on their second, and consider taking them to court if they are caught again. It's a national scheme which has been successful in other parts of the country and is now being started in the Culm Valley area. I do hope it's rolled out to cover the whole of Mid Devon.

That said, I also hope the police will continue to monitor and find speeding drivers themselves, and not just abdicate responsibility to these volunteers.