About 3.20pm on Monday officers in an unmarked police car detected the driver travelling at 137km/h in an 80km/h speed zone on the Barton Highway.

They were issued with a traffic infringement notice for exceeding the speed limit by more than 45km/h, fined $1841 and will accrue six demerit points.

Superintendent Corey Heldon said the driver's behaviour was particularly disturbing, given their lack of experience behind the wheel.

"This driver has only had their licence a matter of months and has decided to treat the Barton Highway as a racetrack", he said.

"There's never any excuse to speed, and this inexperienced driver doing so on one of Canberra's busiest roads was putting lives at risk with no margin for error.

"There's very little time to react to other drivers at that speed, meaning one small mistake can very quickly turn into a situation that can seriously injure or kill someone."

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