A driver in Gloucestershire is caught speeding every 22 minutes, new research has shown.

Across the past 12 months, 24,121 speeding offences were recorded by Gloucestershire Police, an 11 per cent increase on the previous year.

That works out as 66 people per day receiving speeding fines, or nearly three every hour of every day.

The research carried out by Dr Adam Snow of Liverpool John Moores University and Doreen Lam of the RAC Foundation looked into official Home Office figures.

It showed that 2,386,780 speeding fines were issued across the country in 2018/19, up four per cent from the previous year and an increase of 37 per cent from 2011/12.

In Gloucestershire, the rise was 11 per cent based on the 2017/18 figure of 21,727 and up 122 per cent from the 2011/12 total of 10,847.

The research also highlighted how 99 per cent of those caught were done so by speed cameras. With 36 per cent being dealt with by a fixed penalty notice.

In Gloucestershire 54 per cent of those caught attended a speed awareness course, while just three per cent had their offence cancelled.

There were 1,546 speeding offences that ended up in court, around six per cent of the total, a figure that was down on the previous year.

The Gloucestershire figure is by no means the highest

in the region with Avon and Somerset Police issuing 159,210 penalties in the past year.

Wiltshire Police, however, recorded the lowest number of speeding tickets in the country with just 807 fines over the course of the year.

Speaking about the research, Steve Gooding of the RAC Foundation said: "The simple rule for drivers who don't want to risk ending up with a speeding ticket is not to break the limit in the first place.

"In 2018, "exceeding the speed limit" was recorded as a contributory factor in 13 per cent of fatal crashes in Great Britain where at least one factor was identified.

"Travelling too fast for the conditions" was a contributory factor in 9% of fatal crashes. More than one contributory factor might be recorded per incident.

Since the inception of the National Speed Awareness Course in 2010 about nine million people have attended one.