As Big Holiday Approaches, Here Are the States Most (and Least) Likely To Hand Out Speeding Tickets

July 4 is a big driving holiday. The AAA, which gets copious and credulous publicity for its holiday travel predictions (how do they come up with these things, and does anybody ever check back to see if they were accurate?), predicts that holiday travel will be up 17 percent this July 4 weekend.

Meanwhile, a group that works to give motorists heads-up on tyrannical state law-enforcement fundraising tricks, like speed traps and those vile speed-surveillance cameras, has issued its survey of the states most and least likely to nail drivers for speeding.

This issue always draws letters-to-the-editor from the invincibly pious, who seem to believe that going a little bit over a posted speed limit is a reckless act, rather than a sensible response to road conditions that nearly every good driver takes. In general, endless studies have shown, highway traffic moves at a general consensus of what is a safe speed. The idiots are the obvious exception, but traffic cameras and speed traps tyrannize the rest of us.

Red-light intersection cameras demonstrably add to rear-end collision rates. And in state after state, it's been shown that speed traps and highway speed cameras don't affect safety -- and, in fact, those hidden speed cameras don't even have that much effect on revenue-generation, except for the profits of politically connected companies that manufacture and get the state contracts to install these hideous devices. (Arizona, bless its Wild West soul, recently dumped the company that was operating its despised speed cameras.)

Anyway, the National Motorists Association works against speed traps and other highway tricks that generate fines from what it calls "undeserved traffic tickets." The group issued a list of the best and worst states in terms of shotgunning speeding tickets to motorists.

The group says that getting precise numbers of tickets issued in each state is difficult because "most localities -- especially ticket-happy speed-trap towns -- are reluctant to publicize their ticketing prowess, and states typically don't have an agency responsible for gathering and summarizing ticket data from the
various jurisdictions."

The statement from the group says:

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

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

Here are the 10 states (and District) most likely to ticket motorists:

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

And here are the 10 states least likely to ticket motorists:

51) Montana
50) Wyoming
49) North Dakota
48) South Dakota
47) Alaska
46) Maine
45) West Virginia
44) Idaho
43) Nebraska
42) New Mexico

The group says, "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 well with their day-to-day experiences helping motorists fight traffic tickets.

The full list of state rankings and further information on how they were calculated can be found at www.motorists.org/ticket-trends/.

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