More Than a Quarter of UK Male Drivers Admit to Driving Over 100 MPH

A road in England on April 11, 2020. Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Over a quarter of British male drivers have admitted to driving over 100 mph, more than three times the rate of female drivers, according to a new survey.

Road safety charity Brake published the survey results on Monday to mark this year’s Road Safety Week campaign, which is themed “No Need To Speed.”

Among the 2008 drivers surveyed, 28 percent of male drivers admitted to having driven above 100 mph, while only 9 percent of female drivers admitted to the same.

Edmund King, president of the AA, said it’s probably because male drivers are over-confident of their skills.

“Boy racers think they are better than the average driver and are less likely to think about chances of being killed in a crash compared to their female counterparts,” King told The Telegraph.

King said men are also involved in almost three times as many road deaths.

“Various studies have found that it’s possible to guess the gender of a driver by looking at their driving style—with men more likely to show aggressive driving behaviours like sharp acceleration and speeding. Risk figures from insurance companies back this up,” he said.

The survey also showed that 18 percent of all UK drivers and 33 percent of 25-34-year-old drivers have admitted to speeding at more than 100 mph on a public road.

Almost one in three (32 percent) of all UK drivers, nearly half (44 percent) of male drivers, one in five (21 percent) female drivers, and nearly half (47 percent) of 25-34-year-old drivers admitted to having been in a vehicle speeding at more than 100 mph on a public road, either as the driver or a passenger.

King said the AA believes that road safety needs to be included in the school curriculum so that young people can be educated before they get behind the wheel of a car.

“On average, there are 11 deaths or serious injuries every day on UK roads where speed—either exceeding the limit or travelling too fast for conditions—is identified as a contributory factor to the crash by the police,” Brake said in a statement.

The charity said this figure is likely a “vast underestimate” of the impact of speed.

“Slower speeds mean more chance to stop in time, and speed is an inevitable factor in nearly all deaths and serious injuries,” Brake said. “It is difficult in some crashes for the police to determine whether or not speed was a direct causal factor, and more in-depth collision investigation following fatal and serious injury crashes would be likely to show higher rates of speed as a causal factor.”

Brake said that data shows the highest excess speed was a driver travelling at 152 mph in a 30 mph zone, recorded by the Metropolitan Police, and the highest speed overall was 180 mph, captured by Nottinghamshire Police in a 70 mph zone.