Community Speed Watch volunteers in the East Riding have caught over a thousand speeding drivers this year, significantly contributing to Humberside Police's local road safety efforts.
Community Speed Watch volunteers have caught a significant number of speeding drivers across the East Riding, according to Humberside Police.
The scheme relies on local residents working alongside neighbourhood policing teams and a dedicated coordinator to monitor vehicle speeds and report offenders. The East Riding has emerged as the region's most active area for the initiative, providing the vast majority of the total submissions recorded by the force this year.
Humberside Police Special Operations Unit Superintendent Gary Foster explained the importance of the community scheme, noting its role in education and casualty reduction, and highlighted the sheer volume of reports generated by East Riding residents.
Superintendent Gary Foster said:
"But it is to give you the insight and where safer for us to put into it, and we obviously work closely with them in terms of education and casualty reduction. So two of the key components that we're looking at from a play-based perspective are Community Speed Watch, which is local volunteers who work with our neighbourhood policing teams and our Community Speed Watch coordinator. They've been trained on handheld detection devices, they pass details of offenders to us, and the East Riding is by far and away the most significant contributor towards road safety within the Community Speed Watch side of things. So total submissions this year, which is the total number of offending vehicles that have been passed to us, is 1,482, of which 1,224 have come from the East Riding."
The initiative sees trained residents using handheld speed detection devices to monitor traffic in their local areas. When speeding vehicles are identified, the details are passed on to the police, who then initiate a tiered warning system for the registered keepers of the offending vehicles.
While the volunteers themselves do not have direct enforcement powers, their monitoring leads to police intervention. This process begins with warning letters and can culminate in officers visiting the homes of repeat offenders.
Highlighting the scale of the operation, Superintendent Gary Foster provided a specific example of one local group's recent activity. He noted that in just two sessions during April, a small team of volunteers recorded dozens of vehicles exceeding the limit, including instances of drivers travelling at more than 36 miles per hour in a 20 miles per hour zone.
Superintendent Gary Foster said:
"You've got 47 groups operating the East Riding. I've just picked one just to give you some indication. There are 11 volunteers that go out with these handheld devices. They've done two sessions in April, 44 vehicles have exceeded the limits, a 77% accuracy range in that, which means the speed's right. And for over 36 mph in a 20 was recorded 44 times. The process works by they get a letter from us. First warning, second warning letter, if caught again, and finally it's a visit from us with a third letter, so it's not enforceable but it is the community generating their own kind of management of speeders. The issue with this tends to be that the majority of people that are caught are residents of the village. So, we do get some pushback but it does reduce the number of speeders when a group is really active."
Despite occasional resistance from locals who find themselves caught speeding in their own villages, the police maintain that the presence of active volunteer groups successfully reduces the overall number of speeding vehicles on East Riding roads.
With nearly fifty groups currently operating across the area, the community-led approach continues to be a central part of the force's strategy for managing road safety and driver behaviour.
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