Drive one of these cars. This would be more interesting if there were some theoretical basis as to why they’re less ticket bait than others, as opposed to (I assume) empirical data. It’s not clear what else they have in common.
My theory of ticket avoidance is a) don’t drive a red car — they stand out and look fast even sitting still and b) don’t cruise the left lane on the freeway — that’s where cops are looking for speeders. I’ll never rent a red car if I can avoid it. I rarely drive below the speed limit, and I get a speeding ticket about twice per decade or so (a rare enough event that it has no effect on my insurance rates, let alone my driving privileges).
I recall back in the early nineties, when a well-known space activist (who will remain nameless to prevent embarrassment) and I were driving from DC up to Princeton for Gerry O’Neill’s funeral in his rental. We were going through Maryland, which is renowned for speed traps, and I warned him to use the left lane for passing only, but he didn’t heed me, and blithely cruised in it, until he heard the sirens behind him. And while we were pulled over, yet another well-known space activist passed us, saw who was sitting in the driver’s seat, and laughed.
And this all confirmed my theory, sort of, at least to me. I’ve only gotten two speeding tickets on a freeway in my entire life — all the others have been on open two-lanes, or passing through towns and not slowing down enough.
Surely the most likely explanation is the kind of people who drive them. Many of these vehicles are the sort driven by soccer moms and old people.
Jaguar XJ Sedan
I presume a vehicle that spends most it’s time at the local garage getting fixed would tend to get less tickets. Of course, my experience is with Jaguar’s from the 80’s, but have they improved much?
Here’s one of my rules of thumb: don’t speed up just because the cop in front of you slowed down and pulled off. Mostly likely he saw you coming and just wants to get on your six.
Three tickets in the last two years (yikes!), two in a black Mustang, one in a red Jag. All via instant-on radar, on lightly-traveled roads, coming from the other direction….
BBB
As a kid, I’d always heard that red cars have higher insurance for this very reason. (I have no idea if that’s true.)
For most of the listed vehicles, I see “old people and socker moms” written all over them. I don’t think socker moms are timid about putting the pedal to the metal. The pick-ups I really don’t get. At least where I am, pick-up drivers seem more likely to speed than car drivers.
I’ve been pulled over a lot in Idaho, about three times in 4,000 to 5,000 miles (I drove to Yellowstone about once a year in those days). Only once was I at fault (I passed on a dashed line, but it ran out just before I got back in my lane). The only thing I can figure that they all had in common was my Kalifornia license plate. Yet another reason to hate the state.
Hate California that is.
When I was about 19 or so, an older cop in Phoenix stopped me and my red Dodge Dart to tell me I didn’t do anything wrong, but that he was watching me. Weird.
Now I’m probably the age of that cop and although I do have a heavy foot and have been stopped many time, I just don’t get tickets for speeding.
I got a ticket about a 2 months ago for driving over a double strip white line dividing 2 lanes. They wanted $295 for driving over a painted line in the road. I’ve hired a lawyer and we’ve got it on appeal for a court date 8 months from now. Gonna get my money’s worth one way or the other.
I’m not going to jinx myself by saying how long it’s been since my last speeding ticket, but the officer who wrote it was an Alaska State Trooper, and I haven’t lived there in more than ten years.
FWIW, snopes say the red car idea is false. http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/redcars.asp
Karl Hallowell, thanks for the heads-up about Idaho.
If I ever take the extended road trip I keep dreaming about, best I first pay Massachusetts’ premium for veteran-status license plates.
And forget about parking near Harvard Square…
Best just skirt around Idaho. It’s a xenophobe’s paradise, and people from the east coast are disliked even more than Californians.
Gerard K. O’Neill; I have an autographed copy of his The High Frontier somewhere.
I drive a red Hyundai, and I was commuting from upstate NY to southern PA for almost a year and a half. I never got a speeding ticket even though I drive a wee bit over the limit. The key is not to stand out in areas where the bears are known to congregate. Part of it has to be luck, as I saw a lot of other drivers pulled over.
I was stopped several times in York by the locals, who thought that I was a drug dealer from Big Apple. (fat white male 50s, client tag on windshield, cluttered car)
They told me that they stopped me for a variety of bogus causes, but they never gave me a ticket. It always took them at least 30 minutes for them to run their checks, etc. So I regularly came into work early and surfed the net on the days that I didn’t get stopped. Other contractors at client had same problem, unfortunately.
I always try to stay just under the limit, and I’m usually successful. I never wanted to personally test the theory that young, black men get pulled-over more (frankly, I’ve heard my share of anecdotes, but that’s just one side of the story, no?) than anyone else. Of course, black people don’t exactly stand-out in a crowd in LA, so there’s that.
Only time I’ve been pulled over was for speeding in a (don’t laugh) park. Yes, the limit was 15mph, and while I don’t recall the exact sequence of events, I know I got nervous and sped-up after the cop started tailgating me. (I guess it’s legal for cops to tailgate people.) He gave me the “disappointed parent” treatment, and I gave him the “contrite son” response, then he let me off.