Speeding Concerns As Thousands Caught Driving In Excess of 100mph

Data gathered by the police has shown that 24,000 drivers were caught doing more than 100mph in the last five years.

Speeding is a concern to road safety, as we all know, but speeds that excessive can become more than just a concern with incidents having the likelihood of being fatal.

The highest speed clocked by police cameras was 164mph, with police unable to trace the driver, while a driver was handed a 6-month driving ban for speeding at 163mph on the M1.

Interestingly, the level of punishment varies greatly of those caught driving at the highest speeds, though the minimum penalty is 6 points and a fine, with that often being in excess of £1,000.

How Big Is The UK’s Speeding Problem?

Speeding offences recently hit the highest level in the UK on record, with fines for mobile phone use while driving also hitting new highs.

Those statistics were released by the Home Office as part of their crime report stats, which is separate from the police figures on speeding in excess of 100mph.

The issue for the police and road safety campaigners is that the number of speeding offences has risen at a higher rate than expected, given the rise in traffic density.

Couple those two things together and you have more traffic on the roads than ever before with more speeding offences than ever being committed – or at the very least, the most drivers caught speeding.

Given that more cameras have been introduced on smart motorways, it’s likely that there would be an increase in offences logged, naturally.

Measuring that accurately is almost impossible, but it’s definitely something that’s worth considering when viewing the latest statistics.

How Do We Tackle The Road Safety Issue?

Road safety is such a broad spectrum that there’s no one simple fix to make the UK’s roads safer, sadly.

But a combination of methods are being considered by the government, police, national highways agencies and road safety campaigners.

Police presence to catch offenders is difficult given the level of patrols that would be required but there are alternative methods, such as introducing more cameras and perhaps even using AI to monitor offences.

And police have already made progress with Operation Snap helping to provide police and authorities with more evidence.

It was launched by police forces around the UK to provide a central place for road users to send in dashcam footage, as well as personal camera footage from cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians.

The issue is that with any methods like this, it takes a while for it to kick in as a deterrent. That’s because drivers need to realise that they won’t get away with offences and the punishments aren’t worth doing the crime for – which is the hope with new methods.

Do you think speeding is a serious issue facing drivers on the roads today? And do you think more needs to be done to prevent drivers from speeding? Let us know in the comments below…