Problem, Officer?

A study was conducted to see which car models received the most traffic tickets. Quality Planning, a company that analyzes driving statistics for insurance companies, looked through data on 2 million cars. High-performance luxury cars got a lot of tickets. This is probably because these drivers want to test out what these cars can do. Colorful SUVs and compact sporty cars with young drivers also got a lot of tickets. Overall an average of 1 moving violation was found for every 500,000 miles driven. The most ticketed model was the Mercedes SL, which received 4 times more tickets than the average model. Others on the top 10 most ticketed models list include the CLS 63 AMG sedan, the Scion tC, the Acura Integra, and the Toyota Camry Solora convertible. The least ticketed models include bland SUVs, minivans, and average looking cars. While Quality Planning doesn’t have an official conclusion, they suggested that drivers who want to drive fast often buy high-performance cars. This leads to these cars being on the receiving end of speeding tickets.

Some interesting finds in the article that were conducted in separate researches include:
• Out of town drivers who are caught speeding are more likely to pay and pay a higher fee for speeding than drivers from that town.
• Drivers caught speeding in cities with budget deficits were more likely to be handed pricier tickets.
• Young women received 33% less tickets than men, but women over 75 years old got tickets at the same rate as men.

I think it makes sense that luxury cars get more tickets than average cars. I agree that drivers who are riskier and more aggressive tend to drive high-performance cars. Another good reason these flashy cars get more tickets could be that these cars simply get more attention than the average car. A police officer sitting in his car with his radar gun sees cars speeding all the time. A car that triggers his attention is more likely to make him give chase. On the finding that young women get a third less tickets than men, I wonder if this meant women are less likely to speed or women are less likely to get a ticket when they are stopped. If it’s the latter, it would be interesting that police officers have such a bias.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562313011143510.html?mod=WSJ_auto_TopRightCarousel_1