Like Getting Speeding Tickets? Keep Buying Foreign!
Photo: Mark Ralston / AFP (Getty Images)
There’s rarely ever data to back up the preconceived notions we all hold about how cars look, like how we’ve all been led to believe that police pull over red cars more often than others. However, the data paints an interesting picture when it does exist. Research shows that cars produced by foreign manufacturers get ticketed in the United States more than domestic vehicles. Numbers may never lie, but they don’t tell the whole story.
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Insurify, an insurance website, combed through its database of over 4.6 million auto insurance applications to gauge which brand’s cars get speeding tickets the most. The research had automakers based in Germany, Japan and Korea locking out the top 10. Infiniti was the worst, with 8.7 percent of drivers ticketed. The least ticketed brands were Cadillac with 5.6 percent, Tesla with five percent, and Volvo with 2.7 percent. The percentages were adjusted to account for the differing number of cars on the road between automakers.
The biggest surprise is Scion being the second-most cited brand. In terms of individual models, 13.7 percent of Scion FR-S drivers reported a speeding ticket. The ranking does illustrate the kind of driver likely to get pulled over for speeding. Toyota discontinued its youth-focused brand in 2016. Eight years later, the Scion-badged cars were probably bought used by younger drivers who are more interested in cars than the typical novice. To be honest, it might be a sign that domestic brands might not have much to offer for new enthusiasts without large checking accounts.
