A driver stopped for speeding on a dual carriageway near Dorchester was allegedly travelling at 145mph, police say.

The driver was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of speeding on the A35 Puddletown Bypass.

It comes less than a month after another driver was arrested for allegedly travelling at 155mph on the same stretch of road. And it follows news revealed in the Echo this week that average speed cameras could be installed on the 70mph limit bypass – a road notorious for speeders.

During 2018, a total of 2,759 speed offences were detected on the road using mobile safety camera vans or by officers from the No Excuse Team.

A spokesman for Dorset Police No Excuse team, which is leading the investigation into the alleged

speeding drivers, say they will

provide an update once both matters have been dealt with in court.

The average speed camera plan was revealed by Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill, whose office said the police and local authorities work in partnership to introduce measures in order to improve road safety and lower the number of people killed on the county’s roads.

No more information was available about the cameras scheme and when it could be implemented.

Average speed cameras use automatic number plate recognition to record a vehicle’s front number plate at each fixed camera site. As the distance is known between these sites, the average speed can be calculated by dividing this by the time taken to travel between two points.

A spokesman for Dorset Police said: “All of the Dorset Road Safe fixed safety camera sites are currently

under review for digital and/or average speed upgrade in discussion with the local councils and Highways England partners but no specific timescales have been set to date.”

n The No Excuse road safety

campaign is an attempt to reduce the numbers killed and seriously injured on roads throughout Dorset.

The team is deployed to areas where the public have expressed concerns, to areas of high collisions and to areas identified through analysis as being of particular risk.

Education and enforcement efforts are directed at tackling the ‘fatal five’: drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, speeding, driver distractions and careless driving.