Revealed: The 30mph roads where police are catching drivers going up to FOUR times the speed limit – where does your local area rank?

‘Incredibly dangerous’ drivers are being caught by police going up to four times the speed limit on 30mph roads, an investigation found today.

Some 48 per cent of UK forces captured drivers exceeding 90mph on such roads in the 20 months to the end of August last year, according to the RAC.

The highest recorded speed on 30mph roads in the analysis was 122mph in South Yorkshire. For 20mph roads, a top speed of 88mph was logged in North Wales.

Roads with 20mph and 30mph limits are more likely to have a higher number of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable groups, motoring experts said.

The fastest speed detected on any road was 167mph on a 70mph stretch of the M1 motorway by Leicestershire Police.

And the biggest difference between the speed recorded and the posted limit was 161mph on a 50mph eastbound stretch of the A303 in Somerset.

The RAC called on the Government to use its forthcoming road safety strategy to tackle ‘avoidable casualties’ in crashes involving speeding drivers.

The figures were obtained through Freedom of Information requests to 45 forces relating to the period from the start of January 2023 to the end of August 2024.

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Some 40 forces provided data, with 90 per cent of these having clocked people on 30mph roads driving at 60mph.

Drivers were also recorded travelling in excess of 140mph by 23 of the forces.

While most of these contraventions were on 70mph motorway stretches, South Yorkshire Police clocked a driver at 146mph on a 50mph southbound stretch of the M1.

And Police Scotland detected someone driving at 148mph on a 60mph section of the A68 in the Scottish Borders.

Some 24 forces caught motorists driving over twice the speed limit on 20mph roads, with seven recording speeds of more than 60mph.

RAC road safety spokesman Rod Dennis said: ‘Although this data is a snapshot, it shines a light on the incredibly dangerous actions of a few, that are putting law-abiding road users at serious risk.

‘Thankfully, the police were on hand to catch these drivers. There is no place for the vastly excessive speeds that some people are prepared to drive.

‘While some speeds were recorded in the middle of the night when traffic will have been lighter, this isn’t always the case – some of the fastest drivers were clocked at other times of day when they’d have been sharing the roads with many others.

‘Speed is the leading cause of deaths on UK roads. We look forward to the Government’s forthcoming road safety strategy understanding what can be done to reduce such avoidable casualties on the UK’s roads.’

The RAC pointed to Government data showing speed is the biggest factor reported in fatal road collisions – in 58 per cent of fatalities, and in 43 per cent of road collisions of all severities.

It added that in 2023, speed contributed to 888 fatalities and 39,882 collisions of all severities.

Chief Constable Jo Shiner, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for roads policing, said: ‘We know that some incidents of going over the speed limit can be genuine mistakes or errors, but the speeds cited here are clearly drivers taking deliberate decisions to travel at excessive speeds, putting everyone at risk.

‘Speed limits are set based on many factors including the road layout, what’s in the surrounding area and taking into account where there might be more vulnerable road users. Choosing to drive above those limits is reckless, selfish and completely unacceptable.

‘We all have a responsibility to keep each other safe and do whatever we can to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads each day.’

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Separate Department for Transport (DfT) statistics show 331 people died in crashes on Britain’s roads in 2023 in which a driver exceeding the speed limit was a contributory factor.

This was at least a 10-year high and represented 21 per cent of all road fatalities.

An RAC survey carried out last year indicated 55 per cent of drivers believe there is a culture among UK road users that it is acceptable to speed, with only 23 per cent disagreeing with this assertion.

A DfT spokesman 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.

‘While our roads are among the safest in the world, we are committed to improving road safety, and recently relaunched our Think! campaign with a focus on speeding, particularly on rural roads.’

Footage filmed inside the car just before the crash in June 2023 in Marcham, Oxfordshire, showed the group laughing and passing nitrous-oxide canisters as the car hit 100mph speeds

Daniel Hancock (left) and Ethan Goddard (right), both 18, died in the crash on June 23, 2023

Elliot Pullen, 17, also died in the car crash on the road in the Oxfordshire village of Marcham

The survey of 2,691 drivers was carried out by research company Online95 between March 23 and April 15 last year.

In December 2024, 19-year-old driver Thomas Johnson was jailed for more than nine years for killing three of his friends after inhaling laughing gas behind the wheel and speeding at more than 100mph.

The teenager was driving a BMW when it crashed into a lamppost and a tree, killing three passengers, on the A415 in Oxfordshire in June 2023.

A forensic investigation found at the time of the crash the car was travelling at up to 87mph along the stretch of road where the speed limit was 30mph, and at more than 100mph shortly before Johnson lost control of the vehicle.

In the same month, speeding driver Shangeeth Sathyanathan, 20, was also jailed for nine years after hitting a car head-on, killing one person and seriously injuring another in Hockley, Birmingham, in August 2023.

The motorist was driving an Audi A5 on the wrong side of the road and reached speeds of 75mph in a 30mph zone when he overtook two cars before hitting a Nissan Qashqai.