A motorcyclist has been banned from the roads after riding through central Harrogate at 82mph. Lee-Roy Campbell was recorded speeding through the 30mph zone on the A61 Leeds Road on a black Yamaha R1 performance motorbike. The 53-year-old was charged with exceeding a speed limit after he was pictured by North Yorkshire Police safety camera team and investigated. The offence took place at 10am on a Sunday last month.
Campbell, of Harrogate, pleaded guilty to speeding when he appeared at Northallerton Magistrates’ Court yesterday. (17 Apr) Magistrates disqualified him from driving for seven months and ordered him to pay £569 in fines and costs. After the hearing, Traffic Constable Andy Forth, who investigated the incident for North Yorkshire Police’s Traffic Bureau, said: “The speed Campbell reached in central Harrogate was frankly ludicrous. “He deliberately placed innocent pedestrians and other road users in serious jeopardy – if he’d hit a child or even an adult at that speed, their chances of surviving would have been virtually zero.” TC Forth added: “As the biker season begins and riders amass in North Yorkshire, this is a timely reminder that no road users are immune from prosecution if they speed in North Yorkshire. Speeding can have serious and lifechanging consequences, which is why we enforce it. “We see those consequences regularly – our officers have to pick body parts up from crash scenes and break horrific news to families of people who have died. If motorists saw those things too, I guarantee it would make them think twice about speeding.”