Insurance company quantifies the true likelihood of habitual speeders having an accident.

Drivers who regularly break the speed limit are at a dramatically higher risk of having an accident, according to new analysis.

Insure The Box, a telematics-based car insurance firm, looked at data acquired over the 620 million miles its customers travelled during 2015 and the associated claims to see whether there was a correlation between how regularly drivers exceed the speed limit and how many accidents they have.

The company has found that drivers who speed 20% of the time are almost twice as likely to crash, with the risk increased by 87%. Even those who speed less frequently – around 10% of the time – up their chances of being involved in an accident by more than 42%.

According to the RAC, 44% of motorists claim to frequently or occasionally break urban 30mph limits, while 70% admit to breaking the motorway speed limit of 70mph.

A spokesman for road safety charity Brake said: 'Breaking speed limits by any amount poses a risk to other road users, because you have less time to react and brake in an emergency. At high speeds, it becomes impossible to respond to what's going on around you and road crashes are more likely to result in a fatality.

'This sort of selfish behaviour warrants strong action. We believe drivers who significantly break the speed limit should face the full force of the law, including a driving ban, to take them off the road and deter others from behaving in a similar way.'