Not all of these offences were committed on the motorway, either. The highest disparity between the limit and the speed a motorist was travelling was in Somerset, when a driver on the A303 was caught hurtling down a 50mph road at 161mph.
Motorists driving at dangerously high speeds appears to be becoming somewhat of a plague on UK roads, with a recent investigation by the BBC finding that between 2019 and 2023, as many as 23,000 people were found to have been driving on the road at speeds in excess of 100mph.
Chief Inspector Craig West of Kent Police told the BBC in January that “speed does kill” and that the fallout of collisions at high speeds is “devastating for the families and friends of the victims and for the officers”.
Government data shows that speed is a factor in just under two thirds (58 per cent) of road fatalities, with 888 people said to have been killed in or by speeding vehicles in 2023.
Later this year, the government is set to lay out its new Road Safety Strategy. Speaking to Auto Express, a Department for Transport spokesperson said: “There’s no excuse for those who risk the lives of others through speeding, and there are already tough penalties in place for drivers who speed.”
However, when asked what measures would be implemented to curb what appears to be a prevalent issue of high-speed offenders, the DfT declined to elaborate, simply saying that the Government department would “set out more details in due course”.
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