Quality Planning — a company that validates policyholder info for auto insurers put together this list based on data gathered between August 2007 and September 2008, using a sample size of 1.7 million vehicles.

Click "next" or select any car to learn how it made the list.

[via AOL Autos]

Photo credit: Kipp Baker

Vehicle: 2009 GMC Sierra 1500
Place: #10 (tied)
Percentage lower than average: 60% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: It's a big pickup truck. Unless you're outfitted with the entire JC Whitney off-road catalog, pickups are as good as invisible on the streets. Well, not invisible, more like moving blind spots blocking your view of traffic. Still, given the utility and apparently lower ticketing rate, the higher fuel consumption and parking woes might be offset.

Vehicle: 2009 Buick Lucerne
Place: #10 (tied)
Percentage lower than average: 60% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: It's a Buick. More accurately, it's a part of the "Old Buick." Recently we've seen signs of life in GM's tri-shield brand with the Buick LaCrosse and Buick Regal, but the Lucerne is positioned staunchly in the "old-man driving 10 MPH under the speed limit in the fast lane" stereotype of Buick. This car isn't ticketed because its drivers don't break the law, well, they don't break speeding laws. Tickets for no turn signals and late turns across three lanes of traffic into Old Country Buffet are rare.

Vehicle: 2004 Oldsmobile Silhouette
Place: #8 (tied)
Percentage lower than average: 63% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Nothing says "I'm not worth your time officer" better than a minivan, especially a GM minivan sadly badged as an Oldsmobile. The Silhouette was GM's pity offering to Olds dealers with nothing interesting in the showroom and acted as a footnote in the last days of the brand. It's nothing if not completely invisible in the real world and the drivers are too busy trying not to be seen to go around breaking traffic laws.

Vehicle: 2007 Buick Rainier
Place: #8 (tied)
Percentage lower than average: 63% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Platform prostitution at its finest, the Buick Rainier started life as the Chevy Trailblazer, which begat the Oldsmobile Bravada, which died with the brand, so it was rebadged as both the Saab 9-7x and Buick Rainier. A lesson in how not to manage a platform for success. The Rainier has not one but two invisibility shields: 1) it's an unremarkable looking SUV, and 2) it's a Buick. Might as well have that fancy cloaking technology the Predator used.

Vehicle: Mazda6
Place: #6
Percentage lower than average: 66% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Despite the Mazda 6's more sporting character compared to other mid-size family sedans, it's still a mid-size family sedan. There are more than enough hot-heads in pony cars and German prickmobiles to collect revenue from.

Vehicle: 2005 Buick Park Avenue
Place: #5
Percentage lower than average: 68% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Quite a preponderance of Buicks on this list isn't there? Of the cars on here, we've always felt the Buick Park Avenue got the short end of the stick. The final generation actually wore some pretty crisp styling but was always burdened by terrible old-fogey wheels and later boasted tacked-on ventiports. The supercharged 3800 V6 would scoot off the line but the floaty suspension and drowsy interior made the idea of breaking the law a non-issue. Plus, what cop wants to ticket the nice little grandma behind the wheel.

Vehicle: Chevrolet C1500, K1500, 2500HD, 3500HD
Place: #4
Percentage lower than average: 72% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Same reason as its GMC Sierra twin, it's a truck and thus nothing more than an large lump taking up space on the road. With the 6.0-liter V8 they can be pretty fast and they're surprisingly agile around a corner, but nobody buys a truck for the go. As to why the Chevy has such a remarkable difference in ticketing rate we haven't a clue, perhaps since GMC buyer paid more for theirs, they feel like they should drive it faster and park in goofy places.

Vehicle: Chevrolet Tahoe
Place: #3
Percentage lower than average: 79% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: If there was a way to make the Silverado more invisible to law enforcement, it's to close up the bed, add a pair of doors and call it the Tahoe. Even the name says law-abiding-white-bread-citizen. There's an interesting paradox here in that based on anecdotal evidence a great many Tahoes are driven with reckless abandon, weaving in and out of traffic as if they own the road. And yet, with their inevitably beige, black, or maroon paint jobs, Tahoes blend into the background like a chameleon.

Vehicle: Chevrolet Suburban
Place: #2
Percentage lower than average: 84% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: Take everything about the Tahoe and add more girth. The big, bad, 'Burb has been sailing American roadways so long it's practically an institution. A last bastion for the family of eight which isn't interested in a full-size van, the Suburban is so big as to be imperceptible on a normal human scale, making it perfect for eluding the radar guns gaze. Their relative rarity these days helps out a lot too.

Vehicle: Jaguar XJ
Place: #1
Percentage lower than average: 89% less likely
Why it isn't ticketed: The Jaguar XJ has a shape almost as old as the idea of the car. Until Ian Callum came along and boogered-up the design with the 2010 Jaguar XJ, the car was so ubiquitous, and favored by such old buyers, it's practically never ticketed. The colors are generally sedate and unassuming, British Racing Green is as crazy as it gets, none of those obscene reds and yellows that draw radar guns. The trick is beneath the 40 year old skin is the possibility of an all-aluminum automobile sporting a 400 HP supercharged V8. It's a perfect sleeper and the car least likely to get you ticketed.

That's right, our story on Philip Odegard's little faux speeding escapade made it on to last night's what we read on the blogs news segment of the world's greatest motoring show, Top Gear. And they did about the same amount of fact-checking we did on it. Actually, we think we may have done a bit more. We at least tweeted about it to Philip Odegard — however, it was to no avail as he didn't answer.

But, here's what the OCRegister has to say about the story after doing a bit of digging around:

"The question was raised earlier this week by Jalopnik.com, a site for car lovers, after this image of a speeding ticket was reportedly posted on the Web by someone named Philip Robert Odegard.

The partially obscured image purports to show that Odegard, 22, a self-described technology evangelist and entrepreneur, was caught driving a $1.4 million Bugatti at "210+" mph in the early hours of July 1.

But a call to the California Highway Patrol reveals the image is a fake.

In fact, Odegard was ticketed on April 1 for traveling 100 mph at the same location on the toll road, according to CHP officer Chris Goodwin.

Odegard was driving a 2004 Infiniti, not a 2008 Bugatti, Goodwin said."

What? A 2004 Infiniti? Really? You know, we should have known better. Those silly, self-described social media experts — you never can trust them, can you? But, when even Top Gear gets played, we don't feel like we're in the worst company.

Kudos to the OC Register for, you know, doing the journalist thing and calling up the CHPs to ask. That's our Top Gear "top tip" of the day today! (Hat tip to Sean!) [OC Register]

Officials in Pinal County, Arizona have recently terminated their contract with Redflex, the company currently providing speed camera coverage for the rural area. Reasons for the termination include negligible income from the program and a doubling of accident-related deaths on the applicable roadways.

The two camera vans shuttered 11,416 times during the period between September 2007 and last month. Of those snaps, 7,290 resulted in tickets, but only 3,711 were paid. Those paid tickets resulted in $134,199.43 of gross profit, but the county only saw a net profit of $12,391.58. After running the numbers through a very complex series of algorithms, we arrive at the total cost of the speed camera program, which is a whopping $121,807.85.

Instead of the failed camera program, county officials hope to reinstall actual police officers to do the ticketing, thereby upholding the motorist's constitutional rights to face their accusers.

Constitutional Rights 1. Speed Cameras 0. Booyah.

(Hat tip to Jeff!)

[AZCentral]

The annual nationwide study of 1.7 million vehicles receiving traffic code violations by ISO Quality Planning in California, reveals Hummer H2s and H3s sit atop the list of most ticketed vehicles. Below, the full list of the top ten most and least ticketed vehicles.

Here's the San Francisco-based company's methodology:

Traffic code violations data for a one-year period from 2007 and 2008 were used for the study. Vehicles that were discontinued for more than 10 years were not included in the analysis. Violations were standardized based on the number of violations per 100,000 miles driven for each model. That standardization accounts for the differences in average annual miles driven by different models. Each vehicle model’s violation count per 100,000 miles was compared with the average across all the models to identify the 10 models with the highest and lowest violations, as compared to the average. For example, Hummer drivers were 4.63 times more likely to get a ticket, as compared to the average.

The study found these are the ten most ticketed vehicles, in order from most ticketed to least along with the percentage above the average:
Oh Hummer, why must you consume our pocketbooks? We love you when you run over things, play in the water or transform into a mysterious quasi-governmental robot. With the price of gas coming down, things between us have been more livable, but we still can't afford your ravenous addiction to gasoline. Maybe this is why GM is trying to off you.

Now for the other side of the ticketing coin. The ten least ticketed vehicles in the country, this time from least ticketed to most, along with the percentages less they receive tickets from the average are:

Buicks, Olds and big Chevys? Shocker. An interesting side note: Chevy Tahoes and Hummer H2s are basically the same vehicle mechanically — why the huge difference? Our guess may be it has something to do with the mind-set of the people who drive them. Remember, sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason — at least when it comes to the type of people who purchase certain vehicles.

[Newsday via Motive Forums, ISO Quality Planning]

Photo Credit: Flickr

Of course, like all similar television news investigations there's no hard proof that he's doing this on purpose. It didn't help his case that he refused to comment on the record, but we've driven in Michigan and it wouldn't surprise us if there were 2,400 people worthy of getting ticketed. What do you all think?
[WXYZ via Motive Mag Forums]

Enforcement Areas

Unlike certain laws, such as cell phone usage or seat belt infractions, speeding laws are almost universally primary. That means that you don't have to be breaking another law to get a ticket, though if you do break the law you could be looking at additional fines if you're breaking other laws.

The map above shows the volume of tickets issued by state patrols (in most cases) for speeding infractions. This is the total volume, so total population of drivers is not factored into the map. There are a few states that also did not participate in the Governor's Highway Safety Association report. California, Texas and the District of Columbia were the major ticket issuers by total number in 2003, but the District of Columbia, Wyoming and Vermont were the highest per capita issuers of tickets. Here were the top ten per capita ticket issuers:

Washington D.C.: 553,523 residents with 434,301 tickets = 78.5% of the population
Wyoming: 506,529 residents with 46,366 tickets = 9.2% of the population
Vermont: 621,394 residents with 52,269 tickets = 8.4% of the population
North Dakota: 634,366 residents with 45,510 tickets = 7.2% of the population
Mississippi: 2,902,966 residents with 197,434 tickets = 6.8% of the population
Maryland: 5,558,058 residents with 349,921 tickets = 6.3% of the population
New Mexico: 1,903,289 residents with 117,303 = 6.2% of the population
South Carolina 4,198,068 residents with 228,363 tickets = 5.4% of the population
Delaware: 830,364 residents with 44,551 tickets = 5.4% of the population
Massachusetts 6,416,505 residents with 337,103 tickets = 5.3% of the population

Highest Speeding Fines

As speeding is a state crime, it's up to the states to determine how much of a penalty can be levied for a first time offense (additional offenses can cause higher penalties, as well speeding in areas such as construction or school zones). The most expensive maximum fine is Virginia, with a first time offense of $1,500.

Here were the top ten most expensive fines in 2007:

Virginia: $1,500
Georgia: $1,000
Illinois: $1,000
Nevada: $1,000
New Hampshire: $1,000
North Carolina: $1,000
Utah: $759
Oregon: $600
Kansas: $500
Maryland: $500

While you may think these penalties are a bit steep, we'd point out that in Finland speeding tickets are proportional to income and a director at Nokia was slapped with a more than $100,000 fine for going 16 miles over the speed limit.

[Sources: The Newspaper, Governor's Highway Safety Association and Forbes]

For the crime he'll be disqualified for 42 days and fined £350, which we think is now something like $59,000. We have to give the officer a little credit for standing up and taking the ticket without complaint. We wouldn't have expected that from a guy named Meredydd (h/t Stoatmaster). [BBC News]

Our fraternal site that likes gadgets the way we love cars (i.e. more than girls) is reporting that a new GPS-powered mirror will help you avoid traffic cameras. The new GPS mirror – creatively called the "GPSmirror" – will also store and alert you to the location of red light cameras, construction zones, and hooker radar hot spots. The alerts can be beeps, flashes or actual spoken words. We're imagining, "Hey! Slow down, rummy." Maybe that last bit is just us... The cost? About three hundred bones. And, considering our last ticket set us back to the tune of $768 (long story), this might not be the worst investment you could make. – Jonny Lieberman

GPSMirror Helps You Avoid Speeding Tickets [via Gizmodo] GPSmirror [cheetah]

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