Five drivers have been caught speeding at more than 100mph on 30 and 40mph limit roads in England, according to the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM).
A further two were caught travelling at over 70mph in these areas, which tend to be largely residential.
The statistics were part of a Freedom of Information request by the IAM to every police force in Britain, asking for the location and speed of their top five highest recorded cases captured on safety cameras in their areas from 1 January 2015 to 30 January 2016.
Thirty-eight of 44 forces provided data. Of those, there were 11 cases where one of their top five fell in a residential 30 or 40mph area, covering five police force areas.
The list is as follows:
Speed recorded/location/limit on road/recorded by police force
113/A663 Broadway, Barlea Avenue, Manchester/40/Greater Manchester Police
109/A638 York Road near Pipering Lane West, Doncaster/40/South Yorkshire Police
106/A56 Chester Road, near Cavendish Road Stretford/30/Greater Manchester Police
103/A6102 Prince of Wales Road near Mather Road, Sheffield/40/South Yorkshire Police
102/A6102 Prince of Wales Road near Mather Road, Sheffield/40/South Yorkshire Police
96/A184 Felling bypass Burlison, Gateshead/40/Northumbria Police
95/A193 Shields Road, Bypass, Byker, Newcastle/40/Northumbria Police
93/A3060 Castle Lane East, Bournemouth towards Iford/30/Dorset Police
92/Birmingham New Road/40/West Midlands Police
85/A35 Chideock – Eastbound/30/Dorset Police
75/A35 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth – Westbound/30/Dorset Police
Sarah Sillars, IAM chief executive officer, said: “These are the roads we all use on a day-to-day basis and as a result are rife with hazards for any driver. Schoolchildren, shoppers, the elderly – they are all using the same space and won’t be prepared for anybody travelling at this speed.”
A vehicle at 30mph would travel 13 metres a second. The overall stopping distance at 30mph is 22 metres. At 100mph a vehicle would travel 45 metres every second.
Seeing someone step out into the road, a driver would cover 30 metres in the time it takes to lift his foot from the accelerator and depress the brake pedal. That is if they have a reaction time of 0.6 of a second. The average driver would be much slower than that to react.
At 100mph the stopping distance is 182 metres – and in a busy urban street a lot can happen in 182 metres.
Sillars continued: “Exceeding the limit to such a degree is potentially suicidal in such conditions, not to mention incredibly dangerous for other road users. Clearly these drivers do not see the potential consequences of what they are doing. We believe if we are going to change this mindset, there needs to be personalised sentencing options made available to challenge this behaviour fully.
“The IAM would support further research on which types of courses would be most effective in changing entrenched speeding attitudes so that we can start to offer them alongside the well-established speed awareness courses for those just over the limit.”
