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Getting caught exceeding the posted speed limit can often end up with you getting pulled over and given a speeding ticket. This is often bad news for drivers, as having speeding tickets on your record can spike your insurance costs. Yet with each state having slightly different laws and enforcement policies, it’s easier to end up getting ticketed for speeding in some states than others. 

So in which states is it easier to get a speeding ticket? According to research conducted by Wallet Hub in 2018, states that “take the hardest line on dangerous driving behavior” were found to be Delaware, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, North Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, Alabama, and Washington. The study looked at two components, one being how strictly a state penalizes reckless driving, with the other being how stringent it is on speeding enforcement. 

A related 2024 study put out by Insurify generated a similar list. The research sought to find out which U.S. states had the highest collection of speeding tickets by looking at insurance quote data, discovering the top 10 states with the highest percentage of drivers who have received speeding violations. These consisted, from top to bottom, of North Dakota, where 8.7% of the drivers have received a speeding ticket, continuing through Wisconsin and Ohio with 7.8% each. Iowa and Idaho were also tied at 7.1%. Wyoming, South Dakota, Virginia, Utah, and Oregon rounded out the bottom five, with rates of 6.8%, 6.7%, 6.6%, 6.5%, 6.4% respectively. 

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More research has been done on the subject of states with the strictest laws, as well as those with the most expensive fines for speeding violations. One study done by Davidoff Law Personal Injury Lawyers and reported on by Forbes in November of 2024 looked at the most common fines for speeding across all 50 states, using data compiled from the Federal Highway Administration, NHTSA, and legal publisher Nolo, coming up with its own list of states you don’t want to get caught speeding.

The study found that the strictest traffic-law state, as well as the worst state for fines, was Illinois; going 35 mph or more over the limit there will cost you $2,500. Georgia, where 11% of in-state drivers have a speeding ticket, took second place. Third place went to Indiana, where speeding fines can hit $1,000. Finishing out the top nine we Vermont, Connecticut, Tennessee, and New Jersey, followed by West Virginia and Hawaii, which both tied. And even though it did not place in the Davidoff speeding study, California is another place to bear in mind; the state is also cracking down on extreme highway speeding through a new automated ticketing system.

The takeaway from these studies on states where it’s it easier to get a speeding ticket point to the simple fact that it is much better to avoid exceeding the speed limit whenever possible, regardless of which state you’re in. Put simply, it doesn’t matter which specific jurisdiction actually gave you a speeding ticket; either way, you are likely to see your car insurance rates increase and also be slapped with a substantial fine that you will then have to pay. In some cases, you could get a speeding ticket when you weren’t even driving — states like Maryland will ticket the owner of the vehicle regardless of whether they were behind the wheel.