It’s the color of fire trucks, courage and danger. It’s also the color of stop – but conventional wisdom tells us that drivers in red vehicles seldom do. The wisdom says that, if you surround yourself in red, you’re a beacon for cops who’ll nail you as soon as you venture even one thin mile over the speed limit.
Is it true that the color of hearts could bring out the worst?
An entire folklore has grown up around red cars. Their eye-catching color snags officers’ eyes more than other colors, some say. Or red, the color of passion, raises drivers’ heart rates, making them more likely to speed unconsciously. Or red, the color of speed, only appears to go faster.
Stories abound; empirical evidence is scarce. To date, the only hard study of car color and speed was one done in 1990 by a reporter for the St. Petersburg, Fla., Times. After noting the colors of cars passing through four intersections in two counties to establish some general proportions, he checked the colors of cars issued the most recent speeding citations.
The reporter’s findings showed that red cars accounted for 14 percent of vehicles on the road and about 16 percent of speeding tickets. “So the red-car theory fizzled,” he wrote.
However, he found statistically significant differences for other colors. White cars, for example, made up 25 percent of all cars but got only 19 percent of the speeding tickets. On the hand, gray cars got 10 percent of the tickets but accounted for only 6 percent of cars on the road.
Police – and data – explain away the red theory.
What catches traffic officers’ eyes? Allegedly, it’s not color. That’s because speed radar doesn’t distinguish color, police say, and because cars of all colors draw attention to themselves by weaving in and out of traffic at high speed, as if dodging competitors at Talladega.
Numbers indicate that operator error, not color, is most responsible for speeding tickets.