201 in a 75: Here Are the 50 Fastest Speeding Tickets in Texas in 2022

With everyone—everyone—speeding these days, we wanted to check in with the fine people of the Lone Star State and bring back our annual roundup of the fastest speeders in Texas, 2022 edition. Gathering the data requires filing a public information request with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Though these are public records, it's kind of amazing that the state plays ball with us on this. We filed the request in February and like clockwork, a few weeks later we were in possession of a spreadsheet with every ticket given by Texas state troopers in 2022 north of 120 mph, plus lots of fun details like the car's make and model, the exact GPS coordinates, and the always-enjoyable trooper notes on the context of the stop.

No surprise, speeds keep picking up, with 2022 clocking some of the fastest drivers we've seen since we started paying attention to this in 2017. This mirrors other reports and studies that show America's roads are getting more dangerous in a post-Covid world, as tempers shorten, police resources are stretched, and people try to make up for lost time.

It's worth noting that this data is from the Texas Highway Patrol, so it's mostly covering the long highways across Texas rather than roads under the purview of smaller municipalities. Highways are where we're going to see higher speeds more consistently, anyway—and did we ever. Of the top 206 speeders in the entire Lone Star State, 25 drivers were nabbed doing 140 mph or more. Another 67 were clocked doing between 130 and 139 mph. The remaining 114 drivers were all ticketed for doing 124 mph or higher.

The average speed in the top 200 was a whopping 130 miles per hour, with the slowest being 124 MPH. But perhaps more illogically impressive was the fastest speed achieved by one brave, dumb soul in a 2018 Dodge Charger who was clocked doing more than 200 miles per hour on Christmas Eve. There were a few surprises, like the two Lincoln Continentals caught at 134 and 136 mph. More unlikely contenders in the 120+ mph club included a pair of Kia Sorentos and a GMC Acadia—but of course, there was a Nissan Altima too. And the excuses given by drivers are as great as ever, like the 125-mph Camaro driver who was "trying to catch up to his mom," the Kia Stinger driver who got caught up in a song at 132 mph, the BMW M3 driver who was "upset from a previous stop" and just had to floor it, or the multiple drivers who said they just wanted to see how fast their cars could go. [Editor's note: This paragraph has been tweaked to remove a line saying it was a surprise that so many Dodge Challenger and Charger drivers made the list. That is, in fact, not a surprise.]

To be clear: this isn't a contest, and there are no winners. Most people speed, sure, but going this fast on a public road is a monumentally stupid thing to do. The reality of these incidents paint a canvas of grim what-ifs—take our 201-mph Charger driver, who got stopped doing that speed in "moderate" traffic on I-10 between San Antonio and Houston. He could've easily taken out a family in an SUV on the way to grandma's for the holiday. We're not here to encourage or glorify this at all.

Statistics published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that Texas led the nation in traffic-related fatalities during the first nine months of 2022. The state has also historically ranked high on the nationwide list of annual speed-related crashes. Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for 2020 places Texas in second place, although the number of deaths to population would score the state somewhere in the middle.

We've curated the fastest of the fast for you below, but if you're interested in seeing all 200, you can view the list in its entirety here.

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