A motorist was caught doing 149mph on the M25, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. The rushing driver was flashed by a speed camera on the London orbital near Swanley, Kent and heads a list of Britain’s fastest speeders in a new survey.
All of the UK’s 39 police forces were asked to cough up their most outrageous speeding offences in the past year by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) and the results make eye-popping reading.
Thames Valley police said a driver was caught doing 127mph on the A413 in Wendover – more than double the speed limit – while another driver was caught doing 119mph in a 50mph limit on the A414 in Stansted Abbotts, Hertfordshire.
How comprehensive is the IAM speeding survey?
It’s a pretty watertight sample. The road safety organisation said that 33 of the 39 police forces in England and Wales responded to its Freedom of Information request.
The IAM research makes pretty sobering reading. One Gateshead driver was trapped doing 96mph in a 30mph zone, which is frankly mind-boggling in an urban area.
And Lincolnshire police caught a driver topping 113mph in a 40mph speed limit on the A17 Station Road in Swineshead Bridge.
What happens to Britain’s worst speeders?
Rewind to the worst offender in this new IAM survey. The road safety body says that the driver caught doing 149mph on the M25, a man in his 20s, was disqualified from driving for six months and fined £600 by West Kent Magistrates Court in March 2014.
However, even these excessive speeding infringements pale into insignificance compared with the UK’s fastest recorded speeding offence. Getaway driver Ben Westwood, 33, was found guilty of dangerous driving in 2013 after hitting ‘up to 180mph’ on the M6 motorway in a modified Audi RS5 during a burglary.
Just goes to show those 155mph limiters can easily be removed…
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