We all know how it goes. You see red and blue lights in your rearview mirror. You pull over and hope the lights are for anybody but you.
Sometimes you’re right, and the police are after some other driver. Every once in a while, though, it is you. A police officer comes up to your window and asks if you know how fast you were driving.
Speeding is among the most common violations out there, with roughly 40 million tickets being issued per year. Naturally, some areas speed more than others.
We’ll talk about some of the states who get the most speeding tickets in the paragraphs below.
1. Wyoming
You may have expected California, Illinois, or New York to have the most speeding tickets, and technically you’d be right. However, those states have the highest number of speeding tickets because they have the highest populations.
If we’re going by the highest number of speeding tickets percentage-wise, the winner is Wyoming. In regards to its population, Wyoming wrote almost 1 speeding ticket for every ten people.
It doesn’t help that Wyoming is the least-populated state in the Union, boasting about half a million people. To put it in perspective, there are twice as many people in Dallas, Texas than there are in the entire state of Wyoming.
It also isn’t doing Wyoming any favors that it has that it is among the states with the largest number of police officers per capita. This is according to a survey conducted just over 10 years ago by the FBI.
If you’re ever in Wyoming, you may want to know how to talk to police officers.
2. South Carolina
South Carolina ranks second on our list of the speediest states. South Carolina has a population of five million, which puts it in the top half of the states population-wise.
Population and police presence only goes so far, though. This state is ten times the size of Wyoming, but it still boast less than a hundred fewer speeding tickets for every 10,000 people.
The good news is that this state has been issuing fewer tickets year after year, as is Wyoming.
3. Oregon
Oregon has a smaller population than South Carolina, but still places lower on the list. It actually boasts 200 tickets fewer for every 10,000 people than South Carolina. This is a large leap compared to some of the other entries on this list.
The bad news for Oregon is that while Wyoming and South Carolina have been decreasing the number of tickets they hand out, Oregon seems to be issuing more tickets as time goes by.
This isn’t because there are too many officers with nothing to do. Oregon actually has the fewest police officers per 1000 people than any other state.
4. Georgia
Georgia is another state that can’t use low population as an excuse for excessive speeding tickets. It’s actually the 8th most populated state in the United States.
While it is one of the most policed states in the country, it also has one of the highest crime rates.
The gap between Georgia and Oregon is not that big in terms of tickets per population. Georgia issues less than 30 fewer tickets than Oregon for every 10,000 citizens.
Georgia has been fluctuating in terms of tickets issued. The number began to fall after 2014, but rose again in 2017.
5. Washington
The close runner up behind Georgia is Washington. Washington issued 610 tickets for every 10,000 people. That’s about the thirty fewer tickets than Georgia per 10,000.
That number may decrease more because Washington is handing out fewer tickets every year.
Washington is about as low as Oregon in terms of police officers, while it’s population is nearly twice as large. It seems safe to say that most of Washington’s police force is not out writing tickets.
6. Mississippi
Mississippi issues eleven fewer tickets than Washington for every 10,000 citizens. That’s not much of a change, but Mississippi is still ahead right now, or behind as the case may be.
Keep in mind that little data is available from Mississippi, so it’s hard to say what will happen to the number of tickets in the future.
Mississippi is in the lower half of the country, population-wise, and roughly in the middle in terms of police populations. It’s also the tenth most violent state in the US, so the cops have far better things to do than write out speeding tickets.
Whatever the reason is, Mississippi drivers tend to speed quite a bit, earning them a spot on our list.
7. Arizona
Arizona is a state known for its deserts, and for some reason people feel the need to reenact Mad Max every time they drive through one. Arizona earns the the seventh spot on our list.
It gives out 566 tickets for every ten thousand citizens. The good news is that Arizona had a major drop in tickets issued after 2014, although that number may be on the rise again.
States with the Most Speeding Tickets
Have you ever wondered which states hand out the most speeding tickets? We’ve given you some of them in the paragraphs above, but there are a lot of other states out there. We encourage you to do more research on your own to see where they fall on this list.
If you want to know more about speeding and other traffic laws, especially in the state of Florida, please visit our site. We can give you some information on what is considered speeding in the Sunshine State.