Nearly half (45%) of all road deaths in NSW in the year up to August 2020 involved speeding. Did you know some people are more likely to speed than others? It depends on which vehicle they drive, what they do for a living, and whether they are male or female.
Cars most likely to get a speeding ticket
You may think Ferrari or Lamborghini drivers are most likely to be caught speeding. But Insurify, a US comparison site, says speeders are usually in affordable cars, not sporty ones.
Insurify analysed 2 million driver records and identified the top three cars that speeders drove:
- Subaru WRX – 20% of all speeding (49% more likely than average to be caught speeding)
- Volkswagen Golf GTI – 17% of all speeding
- Subaru Impreza – 16% of all speeding.
Finnish research in 2019 found the opposite: luxury car owners were the rulebreakers.
Luxury car owners speed
It found owners of high-status brands like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were more likely to run a red light, not give way to pedestrians and generally drive too fast.
Previous research has confirmed drivers of luxury cars are more likely to break traffic rules. Drivers of “flashy cars” were less likely to stop at a pedestrian crossing. The chances they would stop fell by 3% for every $1,000 increase in the car’s value. BMW drivers were the least likely to stop.
As one researcher joked, “Despite its good brakes, a BMW will usually stop with a jerk”.
Psychiatrists speed more than cardiologists
Did you know cardiologists are most likely to drive luxury cars? It seems even medical specialists speed.
The British Medical Journal suggests psychiatrists are worse than cardiologists. Psychiatrists are most likely to be fined for extreme speeding (32kmh above limit). However, women received only 18.5% of speeding tickets even though they make up a third of physicians in the US.
Men speed more than women
Middle-aged men readily admit to speeding, https://www.greenslips.com.au/blog/middle-aged-men-are-dying-on-the-roads.html especially when driving alone.
As reported in Personality and Individual Differences, aggressive driving, including sharp acceleration and speeding, is more closely associated with men. Men score higher on risky, angry and high-speed driving styles, while women score higher on dissociative, anxious and patient driving styles.
Some anxious and patient driving styles could be perceived as slow. Is driving too slow as bad as speeding?
Can you drive too slow?
In the UK, you can be fined up to nearly $8,900 if caught driving too slowly in potentially hazardous road conditions.
In Australia, there is no rule about driving slowly. However, Australian Road Rule 125 says a driver must not “unreasonably obstruct the path of another driver”. The Rule gives an example of a driving travelling at 20 kmh for no good reason where the speed limit is 80 kmh.
Some people say many speed limits are just too slow. See our blog, Are lower speed limits really safer?
Remember, safer drivers tend to get cheaper green slips.
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