Data reveals police recorded seven incidents of motorists in UK driving over 130mph
Lisa O’CarrollTue 2 Jun 2020 00.01 BST
Two-thirds of Britain’s police forces caught people driving in excess of 100mph during the first three weeks of the coronavirus lockdown, new data has shown.
The extreme speeds were not confined to motorways, as drivers also took the drop in traffic as an invitation to break the law on urban roads, thus endangering lives, police said.
The highest speed recorded was 163mph on the M1 in London, 93 miles over the speed limit, according to the Metropolitan police’s lead on road safety, Det Supt Andy Cox. That driver was in a Porsche but Cox said offenders were spotted in all types of vehicles, from across all demographics, and in all speed zones.
He urged drivers to think of the dangers to “vulnerable road users” during a period when people were being urged by Boris Johnson to avoid public transport and instead to walk or cycle to work.
Police data obtained by the RAC through freedom of information requests revealed that the second highest speed recorded in early lockdown was 151mph on the M62 in West Yorkshire, and the third 140mph on the A14 in Suffolk.
RAC road safety spokesman Simon Williams described the speeds as “truly shocking” and warned that motorists travelling this fast have “virtually no time to react should anything unexpected happen”.
He went on: “Some drivers have taken advantage of quieter roads to speed excessively, putting the lives of others at risk at the worst possible time. It’s encouraging that so many police forces have taken firm action even during the lockdown, which sends a strong message to other would-be offenders.”
Five other forces detected motorists driving at more than 130mph.
Cox, the Met’s lead for its Vision Zero initiative to eliminate deaths on the roads, said his team caught a driver doing 134mph in a 40mph zone in Enfield. Tracking cameras showed driving speeds in London were “above the limit on average in all categories from the first part of lockdown to early May”, he added.
Data for May showed a tenfold increase in the number of enforcements in the 20mph zone, with 530 drivers caught breaking the limit, compared with just 50 in 2019.
There were more than double the number of offences in the 30mph zone, and a near eightfold increase in speeding in the 60mph zones. The figures relate to physical interventions by officers and do not include data from speed cameras.
RAC hits out at ‘truly shocking’ lockdown speeding offences | The Guardian
Data reveals police recorded seven incidents of motorists in UK driving over 130mph Lisa O’CarrollTue 2 Jun 2020 00.01 BST Two-thirds of Britain’s police forces caught people driving in excess of 100mph during the first three weeks of the coronavirus lockdown, new data has shown. The extreme speeds were not confined to motorways, as drivers… [Read More]
