Are You Driving One Of The Biggest Speeding Ticket Magnets?

Take it easy if you own any of the 10 cars that are most often cited for speeding.

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As the urban legend goes, those driving vehicles painted red tend to receive the most speeding tickets. Though that myth has long since been busted (white cars are actually more often cited), statistics show that some vehicles are more inherently prone to getting their owners busted for exceeding the posted limit than others.

As one might imagine, most of the top 10 models in this regard—based on data compiled by the insurance website Insurify.com—are higher-performance models that practically beg to be driven fast and furious. On the other hand, two of them would be considered relatively serene rides, including one full-size pickup truck. We’re featuring Insurify.com’s list of the 10 biggest ticket magnets below.

Oddly enough, among the 393 car models the site’s statisticians studied, all of the top speed-trap specials are relatively affordable rides. It seems the quickest and costliest exotic sports cars sell in relatively puny numbers and are only driven when the opportunity and conditions prevail, so they’re statistically outclassed here by more robust sellers. We’d also suspect most who are fortunate enough to own a Ferrari or Lamborghini realize they’re driving a car with a proverbial bull’s eye painted on its tail, and tend to take it easy over anything but wide-open roads and/or owns a top-of-the-line radar detector.

In fact, three of the top ten most-ticketed vehicles come from Subaru, a brand that’s more commonly known for selling safe and sound all-wheel drive models made for the Snow Belt. Still, two of the three are higher-performance models, with the rally-race-ready Subaru WRX that packs as much as 310 horsepower leading the pack. But then the list also includes Subaru’s Impreza compact sedan/hatchback, which is a model not otherwise known for being especially speedy.

Among the 10 most cited models, 16.14 percent of their owners were found to have at least one violation for speeding on their records. That’s 40 percent higher than the national average at 9.59 percent of motorists with at least one speeding ticket on their records.

Keep in mind that it’s not cheap to be handed a speeding ticket. Not only does this involve a fine that could be as rich as several hundred dollars (plus court costs and legal fees, if imposed), getting a violation could boost one’s auto insurance premiums by as much as 25 percent or more, depending on the insurer and state in which the ticket was written.

That’s because one of the most important actuarial factors that determines auto insurance rates is a motorist’s driving record. Providers treat those who have been issued moving violations or gotten into at-fault accidents as being more prone to get into crashes charge higher rates to cover the added risk.

If that happens to you, it pays—literally—to shop around among multiple carriers to find one that’s willing to accept higher risk drivers than others, and as such may charge them less for coverage than others. If you can’t otherwise find a better deal, you can also trim your insurance premiums by taking a defensive driving course to help show you’ve seen the error of your lead-footed ways. You can also shave a few bucks off your bill by making sure you receive all the discounts to which you’re entitled, paying premiums annually instead of monthly, and dropping relatively superfluous coverage, like that for towing and roadside assistance.

At any rate, here are the 10 vehicles that are most likely to draw a speeding ticket, and the percentage of their owners who’ve been cited: