Speeding Tickets By State: Where Are Drivers Most Likely To Be Ticketed?

July 2010

The 4th of July is one of the busiest traffic days of the year and nothing can ruin a vacation more quickly than an undeserved traffic ticket.

Information on how many traffic tickets are issued in each state is hard to come by because most localities — especially ticket-happy speed trap towns — are reluctant to publicize their ticketing prowess.

That means that getting drivers the information they need to protect themselves from unjust tickets requires a little creativity.

The National Motorists Association to the rescue?

Luckily, the National Motorists Association (www.motorists.org) — a motorists rights group that has been helping drivers fight traffic tickets for over 25 years — has come up with a way to give 4th of July travelers some insight on which states most likely to ticket drivers.

How did the NMA generate these rankings?

The rankings below were generated by analyzing ticket-related search queries such as “speeding ticket” and “traffic tickets” over time using Google’s Insights for Search — a public tool that shows search trends across the United States.

Without further ado, the rankings:

After crunching the numbers, the National Motorists Association found that the state most likely to hand out a traffic ticket is Florida, followed closely by Georgia and Nevada. The state where drivers are least likely to get a traffic ticket is Montana.

Here is the full list of states:
(ranked from most likely to ticket drivers to least likely)

1) Florida
2 tie) Georgia
2 tie) Nevada
4) Texas
5) Alabama
6) Missouri
7) New York
8) North Carolina
9) District of Columbia
10) New Jersey
11) Louisiana
12) Arizona
13) Mississippi
14) California
15) Maryland
16) Iowa
17) Washington
18) Oklahoma
19) South Carolina
20) Indiana
21) Tennessee
22) Illinois
23) Ohio
24) Kansas
25) Michigan
26) Colorado
27) Delaware
28 tie) Minnesota
28 tie) Virginia
30) Massachusetts
31) Pennsylvania
32) Connecticut
33) Arkansas
34) Wisconsin
35) Vermont
36) Kentucky
37) New Hampshire
38) Hawaii
39) Rhode Island
40) Utah
41) Oregon
42) New Mexico
43) Nebraska
44) Idaho
45) West Virginia
46) Maine
47) Alaska
48) South Dakota
49) North Dakota
50) Wyoming
51) Montana

Obviously, these rankings aren’t perfect (search queries can be impacted by a number of different factors), but the National Motorists Association has found that the list matches up very well with their day-to-day experiences helping motorists fight traffic tickets.

Click here to view the spreadsheet used to calculate the rankings.

You can find a sample of the state-by-state data for the “speeding ticket” keyword on Google Insights for Search by clicking here.

The rankings were compiled by averaging the data for the following keywords:
speeding ticket, speeding tickets, “speeding ticket”, “speeding tickets”, traffic ticket,
traffic tickets, “traffic ticket”, “traffic tickets”
.

For more information on the National Motorists Association, please visit our home page.