THE death toll on Dorset roads on Tuesday night (November 13)was higher than the number of innocent people killed by terrorism in the UK in the past two years.

Parkstone Grammar School pupil Jo Malcolm, aged just 17, has become the latest statistic in what is turning out to be a grim 12 months on the county's highways.

The past few weeks have been especially appalling, not least because of the number of young people who have died. By contrast, no-one has lost their life at the hands of terrorists in the UK since July 2005 (apart from a suicide bomber), though that is certainly not for the want of trying, as we saw this summer.

This type of comparison often leads to the argument that governments spend too much time and effort upping the ante on terrorism, when it kills relatively few people. On Wednesday, Gordon Brown announced security is being stepped up at hundreds of railway stations, ports and airports, power stations and a vast range of public buildings that could be viewed as "soft targets". These measures will affect every one of us though they can never be foolproof. The same devastation as 7/7 could be unleashed in any crowded street in Britain on a packed Saturday afternoon.

The most important job of any government is to keep its citizens safe and secure. But such is the level of public cynicism now, it is very easy to suspect that politicians use fear of the terror threat for other purposes.

However, I'm still inclined to believe that those who make these decisions do so for the best of reasons and remain convinced that if we knew the true extent of the threat we face, we'd be horrified.