Convicted Driver
Speeding costs UK drivers £150 a year
Tue, 18 Apr 2006
Speeding fines cost British motorists a total of £114 million a year, and add an estimated £36 million to car insurance premiums every year, a new report claims.
The report compiled by Datamonitor found that drivers are handed 2.2. million speeding convictions a year, meaning that one in every ten motorists is caught.
Four out of every five convictions is a first-time conviction.
Having a speeding conviction makes it more difficult to get cheap car insurance as convicted driver insurance is more expensive as speeders are deemed more dangerous on the roads.
Of those convicted, less than half (45 per cent) are caught by speed cameras.
However, the huge increase in the number of cameras in recent years has been blamed for the trebling of the number of speeding convictions in the last ten years, with currently more than 6,000 speed cameras in operation in the UK.
According to the Department for Transport, speeding is a contributing factor to 36,000 serious injuries and 3,000 deaths in the UK every year.
However, opponents of the use of speed cameras argue that concentrating on speed limits makes drivers less aware of other dangers on the road.
© Adfero Ltd
