Riding in red

We just returned from two weeks in West Virginia, where we traveled by car throughout the state. We both thought we noticed after a few days that we were seeing more red cars than we’ve ever seen. Maybe it was our imagination, but I don’t think so. Can you confirm?

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to answer this. Who, after all, would have done this count?

Well, it turns out someone did — sort of.

Iseecars.com did a study of 9.4 million cars on the road. The methodology doesn’t give a perfect count, as they looked at only 1- to 5-yearold vehicles sold in each state in 2019 (and that wouldn’t take into account cars of whatever colors that were already owned and on the roads). They then tallied the most popular colors nationally and in each state.

Nationally, they found, white and black are the top colors (white edging out black by .7 of a percentage point). The two together are 48 percent of cars on the road. They’re followed, in order, by gray, silver, red, blue and brown ( just 1.4 percent are brown). Then, at less than 1 percent each: green, beige, orange, gold, yellow and purple.

In the state-by-state analysis, black or white was the most popular color in every state, followed closely by silver or gray. West Virginia was one of 38 states where the fifth most-popular color was red, and the proportion of red cars in West Virginia was higher than any other state — 14.5 percent. In contrast, in most states where red was the fifth mostpopular, the proportion was 9 or 10 percent. Would that small an increase over the norm be noticeable? Maybe not, but apparently, you saw it!

And, in case you’re interested, they also analyzed which states had the highest percentage of vehicles that were NOT white, black, gray or silver. Maybe surprisingly, these were the top five: Vermont (30 percent were not those four colors), West Virginia (29.7 percent) and Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota (each somewhat more than 28 percent).

The states with the highest proportions of white, black, gray and silver vehicles included New Jersey (19.8 percent of autos were other colors), Louisiana (19.6 percent), California (17.3 percent) and Hawaii (17.1 percent).