Could the Color of Your Car Contribute to a Criminal Charge?

You know better than to drive while intoxicated, and you know your limits. What you may not know, however, is that any alcohol in your system — and many prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) medications — can still expose you to a charge of driving under the influence (DUI). All it takes is for an officer to decide that you seem impaired after pulling you over for a traffic stop.

There are a lot of different things that could result in a traffic stop — including speeding, turning too wide and rolling through a stop. Even the color of your car could potentially provoke police interest.

Urban legends say that red cars tend to attract the eye of police officers everywhere. If you want to “fly under the radar,” the story goes, you need to drive a vehicle of a different color. While a lot of urban legends are just myths, this one is actually based in reality.

According to the statistics maintained by several law enforcement agencies, the only vehicles that get pulled over and ticketed more often than red ones are white ones — but white cars are also more numerous. When you take the proportion of vehicles in each basic color group into consideration, red vehicles definitely attract the most police attention.

Why? Blame it on the age-old association people make between the color red and vitality, passion, excitement and risk-taking. Police officers may consciously or unconsciously make the same associations, which leads them to scrutinize red vehicles more closely for driving mistakes.

If you’re pulled over for a traffic stop, always assume that the officer’s questions about where you’ve been, where you are going, what you’ve been doing or why you think you were pulled over are attempts to fish out information that supports the idea that you’re somehow driving while impaired. Exert your right to remain silent and call a defense attorney if you are charged.