Speeding laws in the UK have changed, are you in the know?
24th April 2017 marks the day speeding in the UK changed. The rules around speeding fines in the UK have now changed and if this is the first you’ve heard of it, you’re not alone.
Research from Honest John showed that a whopping 84% of UK drivers didn’t know what these new changes were. More worryingly, 56% didn’t know changes were coming at all.
So with that in mind, we wanted to explain the new rules and highlight the one piece of in-car technology that could increase your chances of getting a speeding ticket.
The new speeding fine structure
Firstly: the thing that’s staying the same. There is still a cap of the maximum fine you have to pay. This is £1,000 on normal roads, or £2,500 on a motorway.
Secondly: what’s changing. Now if you’re caught going well in excess of the legal limit, you could be seeing a fine equalling 150% of your weekly take-home income. For minor offences, it will be 50%. Before today, the fine for excessive speeding was only 100% of your weekly pay, so anyone caught speeding will be seeing quite a jump in fines.
To put this into numbers, if you’re driving 41mph in a 20-zone, you’ll be hit with the higher fine. The same goes for if you hit 100mph or more when you should be at the national speed limit.
These changes have been made by the Sentencing Council, which says there’s now a “clear increase in penalty as the seriousness of offending increases”.
Could your sat nav get you in trouble?
As well as the research from Honest John showing how few drivers knew about the above changes, another study suggests there’s a speeding menace in a lot of our cars.
One in six drivers told uSwitch that their sat navs told them the wrong speed limit at least once. And as more than half (56%) of drivers surveyed admitted to not knowing the correct speed limit for single and dual carriageways (it’s 60mph and 70mph for all of you struggling), many drivers will be trusting what their sat nav has to say. But as only a third of people regularly update their machines, the information they’re hearing is highly likely to be wrong.
With the new harsher penalties in place for anyone caught speeding, hearing the wrong speed limit from your sat nav could be a costly mistake to make.
So update your sat nav, watch your speed and learn the single and dual carriageway limits while you’re at it. We know it may not sound fun, but we can think of worse ways to spend an afternoon. Such as getting a massive fine…
