HN Reader

Location data show that race affects citations and fines for speeding

> ...rideshare data from Lyft in the state of Florida to compare minority drivers with their white counterparts. Lyft objectively measured drivers’ locations, driving speed, and location speed limits .... White and minority drivers showed no discernible differences in speeding behaviors or traffic violations. However, when both drove at identical speeds, police were still 33% more likely to issue speeding citations to minority drivers and charged 34% more expensive fines, unequivocally revealing bias.

Amazing to have access to that data. So many questions...

What's the variation in ticketing with respect to different police departments? How about geographic location?

2 days agoby djoldman

Not surprising, however, something I'm curious about is how much of the effect is due to first order bias directly due to racial prejudice -- and how much of it is second order biases and miscommunications due to the inherent social tensions of a minority traffic stop in the US.

For sure, I am immediately privileged by my color when I am stopped by the police, but the social ease by which we communicate and interact during the stop also intuitively plays a role in whether I'll get off with a warning or not.

Although I guess it's probably a distinction without much of a practical difference.

2 days agoby kube-system

A black friend of mine gets stopped constantly. He is highly educated (well beyond a bachelors degree) in a stem field. He dresses professionally. He drives cautiously and does not speed. He once joked he does not feel as bad getting stopped at night because it is less likely racial profiling.

2 days agoby sunflowerfly

> our findings suggest that compared with enforcement by police officers, appropriately located automated technologies, such as speeding cameras, could help reduce selective enforcement of traffic violations.

Every stoplight should be a speeding, red-light running, and missing tags enforcement camera.

2 days agoby xnx

This seems like the kind of research that would invite retaliation from the current American administration. I hope none of the authors are visa holders.

2 days agoby g8oz

This seems to presume that automated enforcement replaces, rather than enabling departments to even more precisely focus, the selective human enforcement of traffic laws. Given the role of selective traffic enforcement as a conscious tool in generating contacts to look for non-traffic issues, rather than a product of mere implicit bias, I find it extremely unlikely that this would happen with any real-world police department.

2 days agoby dragonwriter

That is positively shocking. Police who are already widely known to target minorities for criminal offenses also target them for minor traffic violations.

2 days agoby josefritzishere

Given the different rate of death-by-cop, I'd be surprised if the "Asian" contribution to the citation effect wasn't actually negative.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

2 days agoby readthenotes1

> Our main analysis assigns drivers to one of two racial and ethnic categories: white or minority, where minority includes Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, or Hispanic (31).

Whenever you see this kind of aggregation you can be certain that you there will lies, damned lies and statistics. Let me guess - if the authors did by 5 groups the results they got were not saying something they liked. Or at least they should have put any kind of proof that the rate of ticketing for all of those aggregated groups were quite similar.

2 days agoby ReptileMan

I very well believe this could be true. However, after hearing of many studies that don’t get published unless they confirm the suspicion of racial prejudice I don’t even know what to believe anymore. Side effect of a post-truth society locked in endless red-blue proxy fights I guess.

I don’t know why we need police doing traffic enforcement. The cars know how fast they are going, the cars know where they are, the cars know what the speed limit is, why are they able to speed? Enforcement should be fully automated and violations should be forced to provide evidence of a special situation id they do speed eg: in labor etc. or a ticket is automatically issued.

Also in favor of governors on max acceleration and relative force generation for large heavy vehicles. Eg: 9k lb electric truck can do 0-60 in a minimum of 8seconds.

2 days agoby pclowes