Lincolnshire branded “speeding capital of the UK” with over 100,000 offences in a year

Lincolnshire Police dealt with 123,533 speeding offences in the last financial year, making the county the most prominent in the UK for speed limit breaches per 100,000 people – according to a new study.

A study conducted by Moneybarn looked at speeding offences in each police force area of the United Kingdom from the last 12 months.

The number of offences were then compared with the area’s population to create a score of offences per 100,000 people – with Lincolnshire ranking number one in the whole country.

123,533 speed limit offences were reported in Lincolnshire in 2020, the most recent financial year of data – and with a population of around 766,300 covered by Lincolnshire Police, this works out at 16.12 incidents per 100,000 people in the county.

| Photo: Moneybarn

This is 12 over the national average, and over five clear of the next highest, Norfolk’s 10.41. In contrast, Humberside was 13th with a rate of 5.16 per 100,000 people, slightly above the national average.

The explanation for these data findings could be one of a number of things, with the rurality of Lincolnshire’s roads likely playing a part.

The Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership also sets up numerous police vans across the county with built-in speed cameras to monitor the pace of vehicles on roads.

Also within the study was data around Google keyword searches for speed awareness courses in each county between September 2021 and August 2022.

Despite being top of the national pile for speeding incidents per 100,000 people, Lincolnshire was only 16th for these Google searches for speed awareness courses.

4,060 searches were reported in Lincolnshire, though this data does not relate to people actually attending such awareness courses.

Steve Batchelor, Head of Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership, said: “Lincolnshire is not densely populated and has one of the largest road networks in the country. The county is hugely attractive to tourists and as such sees many more road users than residents.

“To add context to the current figures, a temporary 50mph speed limit on the A1, which was necessary to protect workers and road users, saw an increase in speeding offences. The work has been completed and the speed restriction is now removed.”

Chief Inspector Steve Williamson, Specialist Operations, Lincolnshire Police, said: “Speeding is one of the main contributory factors in collisions where people die or are seriously injured on our roads. We make no apology for enforcing the speed limit on our roads; it is one of the things our communities ask us to focus on.”

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