Cumbria Police said its Road Safety Camera vans would be on the M6, the A6 and the A66 on Wednesday, July 22. Drivers on those routes faced a day of mobile enforcement after the force released the locations for that date.
The force said: "Today our Road Safety Camera vans will be operating on the A591 between Bothel & Grasmere, the A66 west of Penrith". It was one of the daily location notices Cumbria Police publishes for motorists using major roads across Cumbria.
Cumbria Police daily notice
Police said they reveal the location of their speed camera vans each day and place them in known speeding hotspots. For drivers, that means the practical question is not whether enforcement exists, but where the vans are positioned on any given day.
The July 22 notice pointed to the A591 between Bothel and Grasmere and the A66 west of Penrith, alongside the M6 and the A6. Readers wanting the full day’s coverage still had to rely on the force’s day-by-day publication, which is how Cumbria Police sets out the routes it is targeting.
2025 speed figures
A freedom of information request by the News and Star showed why those locations draw attention. In 2025, a motorist was recorded travelling at 129mph on the M6, the fastest speed detected by a speed camera in the county that year.
Other figures show how far outside the limit some drivers went. One driver was caught doing 121mph in a 40mph zone in a roadworks section of the M6, while another hit 79mph in a 30mph area elsewhere in the county.
The same figures put the top recorded speed in Carlisle at 68mph, in Workington at 45mph and in Whitehaven at 80mph. Even with daily van locations published in advance, those numbers show the cameras are still finding speeds far above the limits on ordinary routes.
Bothel and Grasmere and the A66
For drivers heading through Bothel, Grasmere or Penrith, the useful point is simple: the vans were not random. Cumbria Police placed them on roads where it expects speed to be a recurring problem, and the 2025 figures show why the force keeps returning to those stretches.
That leaves the same open question each day’s notice poses: exactly which other roads were included beyond the locations named in the statement. For anyone planning to use the M6, the A6 or the A66 on July 22, the safest reading of the notice was to expect enforcement on the routes already listed and to treat the rest of the day’s coverage as subject to the force’s next publication.
