DORSET'S road accident record has been slammed by environmental campaigners.

The Council for the Protection of Rural England has hit out at Dorset County Council over its accident statistics for the number of children aged 16 and under killed or injured on the roads.

Every year from 1994 to 1998 has seen on average 25 children killed or seriously injured.

The government directed Dorset to cut figures to 24 in 1999 and 23 in 2000. But the actual figures for 1999 and 2000 were 30 and 37.

Now the organisation is calling on the county council and Dorset Police to act.

Spokesman Howard Thomas said: "These figures represent substantial increases of 18 and 46 per cent rather than modest decreases of four and eight per cent.

"In contrast the South West region and Great Britain as a whole have more than met their targets. County Hall does not seem to be taking Dorset's appalling record on road safety seriously enough."

He added: "We think that it is high time that the authorities started listening to the outcome of their own surveys and realise that Dorset's residents do not want road building - they want safer roads."

But county council highway chiefs defended their record, saying the authority was committed to improving road safety.

A County Hall spokeswoman said: "No children were killed on Dorset's roads last year and the increase in children killed or seriously injured from 30 to 37 is small. Our performance may seem poor when converted to percentages and compared with other authorities but these increases relate solely to child car passengers.

"Dorset Police say inappropriate speed and driver inexperience are factors in more than half of the incidents involving children as car passengers. As a result of our analysis of child accident statistics, our road safety team will be concentrating on driver education.

"The council spent £98,000 on Road Safety education during 2000 and we plan to spend £243,000 this year.

"Cash for rural footways, traffic calming and speed management schemes at particular accident spots has also more than doubled to £2.5 million."

She added the council were piloting child pedestrian training projects, continuing with more than 1,000 safer routes to school and pioneering advanced cycle training for young teenagers, which no other authority was doing.