Once caught by the speed cameras sprouting all over Britain, motorists have realised that more sharks wait in the wings to part you from even more hard earned cash.
Within days of Jeremy Clarkson announcing on BBC1's Top Gear that his mother had been filmed doing 31 mph in a 30 mph zone, her insurance company was demanding a higher premium.
The amount insurers are raising premiums - some over 40 per cent - is enough to scare anyone off the road.
A survey at the end of last year by online legal advice service Law on the Web, discovered that not only were the prices quoted by online insurance companies astronomical but they also differed enormously from company to company.
It gave the example of a 42-year-old man with full no claims driving a £12,000 car for at most 12,000 miles a year. The cheapest quote, which came from Direct Line, with a clean licence was £266.70 - but add two speeding offences and this jumped to £346.50, a 30 per cent increase.
Eagle Star was most expensive, jumping £391.44 to £502.75 which in fact was the smallest increment. Prize for the greediest insurer goes to Admiral which quotes a massive 44 per cent hike.
"Insurers want to deal only with people who are bog standard with no convictions," says former solicitor and founder of Law on the Web, Martin Davies. "It's certainly a good way for them to up the premiums when they want to. Whether it's fair to do so comes down to the argument about whether speed causes accidents.
"For example, if somebody is doing 37 mpp in a 30mph zone, particularly on a clear road in the middle of the night, I'm not sure if that greatly increases the risk of an accident. I think insurers are being unreasonable."
He advises finding a broker to shop around for you which could save a shedload of money.
Insurance application forms ask if you've had any endorsements for motoring offences in the past five years. Failure to disclose a conviction could result in your insurance being invalidated.
Any endorsement will affect the premium every year for at least five years and will continue for as long as you have to answer "yes" to the convictions question on the application form.
A current British TV campaign for a motor insurance firm uses the catchphrase "Quote me Happy". But this friendly face of insurance doesn't extend to motorists caught speeding.
"Once a driver has a speeding conviction we consider that they have an increased risk of making a claim," says spokesman for Direct Line Insurance, Simon Ziviani, adding that it would be impossible to scale the increase in premium according to the amount of miles over the limit the motorists was doing.
"This is not insurers being opportunist," he says. "These rules have been around long before the advent of speed cameras."
Some new insurance companies specialise in low quotes to drivers with speeding fines. Paul O'Gorman, group director at Quoteline Direct, says: "We offer low premiums to drivers with speeding fines because, very simply, we believe that being flashed by a camera doesn't necessarily mean that you're a bad driver - justunlucky."
First Alternative is being set up to address the growing problem of motorists with speed convictions: "We hope to be a cheaper option for the increasing number of drivers caught on speed cameras," explains spokeswoman Miranda Seymour. "We appreciate that many drivers are not being irresponsible - it was just an momentary aberration and they shouldn't be penalised for that."
In 2001 1.4 million British motorists were caught driving over the speed limit. The figure for 2006 is expected to reach 4.5 million.