Speed Limiter for Cars: What Speeding Really Costs You

Speed Limiter for Cars: What Speeding Really Costs You

Adam, our Head of Continuous Improvement, drives a BYD Seal Excellence as his company car. He wasn’t a reckless driver. He just found the car was quicker than he expected.

“The car is genuinely more powerful than anything I’ve driven before, and I found I was regularly creeping over the speed limit without even realising it, especially when accelerating to join the motorway.“

It’s an easy trap to fall into, and it can cost more than most drivers think.

What Speeding Actually Costs

A speeding fine usually starts at £100 with 3 points on your licence, though it can go much higher for faster speeds or if the case goes to court. Points stay on your licence for four years, and insurers can ask about them for up to five. Build up 12 points within three years and you face a driving ban. For anyone who passed their test in the last two years, that threshold is just 6 points, and it means losing your licence completely.

Insurance is where it really adds up. According to consumer group Which?, drivers with a speeding conviction pay an average of £482 a year for car insurance, compared with £391 for drivers with a clean licence. That’s 23% more, every year, for years after the conviction itself.

Adam hadn’t thought about any of this until it nearly became his problem too:

“I always assumed speed limiters were something for commercial vehicles, like vans and lorries. I didn’t appreciate how useful they could be for private car owners or company car drivers until I had one myself.”

How a Speed Limiter Helps

We had a speed limiter fitted to Adam’s car. It’s a small device, professionally installed, that’s set to your chosen maximum speed. Once you reach it, the car simply won’t go any faster, so there’s no need to keep checking the speedometer on a motorway slip road or a fast stretch of dual carriageway.

For Adam, that removed the risk completely:

“Having the limiter fitted has stopped that happening. It’s given me real peace of mind and protected me from the risk of points, fines, or worse, losing my license altogether.”