Police use £1,000-an-hour helicopter to trap speeding drivers

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Drivers breaking the law will be identified by the helicopter's radar detection service, which is also equipped with the "Skyshout" public address system to warn drivers they have been caught.

More than 20 signs are being put up in high-risk accident areas across Essex warning drivers that officers are watching them from the sky.

But taxpayers' campaign groups said the signs and the use of the helicopter to trap speeders were a "bizarre" way to spend public money, while others labelled the scheme "appalling".

The idea was devised by the Essex Casualty Reduction Board, a body which operates speed cameras and is made up of representatives from local authorities and the police.

The helicopter uses GPS mapping software, thermal imaging, and Automated Number Plate Recognition which can read a car's registration plate from 700ft.

A spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "Do they really need to be spending money on signs warning that a helicopter may be in the air at a time when taxpayers, motorists and apparently local councils are feeling the pinch?"

AA president Edmund King said the move could distract drivers, saying: "Putting these signs up could be counter-productive and could lead to more collisions because people are looking at the sky."

Essex Police said the helicopter would only be used to track speeders when it was already flying - not launched on specific speed-detection sorties.

Adam Pipe, the force's Traffic Management Officer, said: "Essex Police is keen to use and develop ideas and strategies that look to address and enhance driver and rider behaviour in an effort to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the roads and will embrace any idea or strategy that supports that cause."

A spokesman for Essex County Council said: "New distinctive signs have been designed to warn motorists of the possibility of detection of offences by air.

"Motorists in Essex are being warned their activities are likely to be picked up from the sky if they drive dangerously."