A RADICAL £800,000 campaign has been unveiled by road, fire, police and council chiefs to cut the level of carnage on Dorset’s roads.

The No Excuse campaign, to be launched on January 15, will see police officers taking to the roads in what Dorset Police describe as a ‘zero tolerance’ blitz on bad driving.

Officers will work 250 two-hour shifts at different locations across the county and will issue on-the-spot fines to people who are failing to concentrate on the road.

Motorists who drive using mobile phones, without seatbelts, at inappropriate speeds or who are distracted by an in-car entertainment system will be pulled over.

They will be asked to attend courses at a Road Safety Centre of Excellence which will be built in Poole as part of the project.

Emergency services representatives, council officers and councillors thrashed out the ambitious project at a Call to Account meeting of Dorset County Council’s Audit and Scrutiny Committee.

During the meeting it was revealed that officials from the Department for Transport visited officers at Dorset County Council earlier this year to perform a road safety health check.

The visit came as statistics revealed that the authority was the worst performing shire county in the country for achieving a 40 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads.

Robert Smith, from the county council’s road safety department, said: “There will be zero tolerance on key behaviours which lead to loss of control and loss of concentration and result in bad driving.

“The campaign will run for a year to make people aware that if they do something they shouldn’t be doing on Dorset’s roads, there are consequences.”