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?
Teasing out that data is actually a more fruitful exercise. I don't mean to sound callous at all when I say this, but having a study that says "In the US blacks are discriminated against" is a bit lacking in new data or understanding. Any intellectually honest observer already knows they face discrimination.
Yep, but a significant percentage of the population are not honest observers. This is pretty hard to refute even for those that would normally attempt to hand wave the data away. This time those folks will have to get more creative.
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.
> The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when “a veil of darkness” masks their race.
Very clever methodology on this one: they used Daylight Savings to rule out other variables.
> Next, they took advantage of the fact that, in the months before and after daylight saving time each year, the sky gets a little darker or lighter, day by day. Because they had such a massive database, the researchers were able to find 113,000 traffic stops, from all of the locations in their database, that occurred on those days, before or after clocks sprang forward or fell back, when the sky was growing darker or lighter at around 7 p.m. local time.
> This dataset provided a statistically valid sample with two important variables — the race of the driver being stopped, and the darkness of the sky at around 7 p.m. The analysis left no doubt that the darker it got, the less likely it became that a black driver would be stopped. The reverse was true when the sky was lighter.
I was questioning whether there are differences in interactions during the stop, because police have a lot of discretion in whether or not to issue a ticket.
Which is to say, it's certainly convenient to think that racism works like "there are racist cops on one hand and innocent well-meaning cops on the other," but that strikes me as an unhelpful oversimplification.
More specifically, I generally believe that most negative effects of racism come from folks who don't much realize how racist they are.
I’m more wondering if there is a sort of social bias that isn’t directly race related. More of a socioeconomic or cultural thing.
I could certainly imagine a cop treating someone in a pickup truck wearing a cowboy hat differently than the same person in a Nissan Altima with chrome wheels playing rap music. Or treating people differently based on how they speak during a traffic stop.
Ultimately I understand there are deep links between culture, socioeconomics, and race, but I’d be interested to know more specifically which of those is more closely linked to this bias.
Then it would be interesting to study if identical actions of racially diverse drivers are perceived differently (i.e. if the same actions are perceived as polite with one race, confrontational with another).
In my experience from sitting in a traffic court a couple times (in Washington state), the only people who get out of a ticket are those who have squeaky clean driving records for 10+ years, and those who have lawyers. But most people can't afford lawyers for traffic violations.
To me, this sounds like the difference between individual (your "first order") and systemic racism (your "second order'), which is pretty well studied. Some people only choose to recognize the existence of the former.
Every stoplight should be a speeding, red-light running, and missing tags enforcement camera.
If you were stupid enough to steal a pack of gum (some of my family are) you'll quickly find iyou're unable to buy groceries from any store in your area [1].
[1] https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/blog/the-spectator-has-your-l...
Yes. People don't scale the way computers do.
1. Where to put them? In Chicago these cameras unfortunately end up being a regressive tax.
2. What to do with the money? Anytime we give the government money from things like this, we create weird incentives. I've been wondering lately what it would be like if we required all the fees to be returned to the federal treasury / burned... no incentives!
Everywhere. Starting with highest volume intersections.
> 2. What to do with the money? Anytime we give the government money from things like this, we create weird incentives.
Good concerns to have. I'm less concerned with bad incentives (e.g. vs. civil asset "forfeiture") because the enforcement is automated. There can still be bias in roll-out of the cameras, but this wouldn't be the same degree.
> I've been wondering lately what it would be like if we required all the fees to be returned to the federal treasury / burned... no incentives!
I like that thinking. This makes everyone's money worth ever so slightly more. (which is also minusculey regressive)
But even if it doesn't, it might still be a reasonable tradeoff. A higher number of minor rear-end crashes (typically between unsafe drivers) might be acceptable if it helps to reduce more t-bone crashes that are more likely to be fatal.
https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/red-light-camera...
"IIHS research examining large U.S. cities with red light camera programs found significant reductions in citywide fatal red light crash rates (and fatal crash rates of all types) at intersections with traffic signals, including intersections that didn’t have a camera. ... Cities that discontinue their programs tend to feel the sting. The fatal crash rate was 30% higher in cities that shuttered their red light camera programs." https://www.amica.com/en/resources/auto/safety/ways-red-ligh...
But the data do indicate that the benefits of automated traffic enforcement vary widely by community. I suspect any of poor road design, reckless driving culture, or local corruption that prioritizes income over safety can lower their net utility, and some combinations of those might even make their utility net negative.
Unless you've seen data that says otherwise, I think this is the same.
Different from the government (in theory). In the US in particular, any data that is generated from a tax-dollar-paid system is by default public information that can be requested either by FOIA or a state-equivalent law. I think that is a qualitative difference that makes this genuinely worth considering. Imagine if Google et. al. were legally required to make their location data publicly available. I mean, assume that were the case from the inception of the idea to gather that data because that's how it is with governments in the US.
(Granted, there are further considerations around the potential for abuse, especially when considering victims of domestic violence/abuse. But the idea is far more palatable than what we currently have with large corporations.)
Let’s be clear: the current situation is that every trip I take is privately accessible information that is sold for pennies but otherwise difficult to access; critically, there is no obligation for the information to be shared. Yes, this is a far less palatable situation than if such data is simply and plainly public: the gatherers, in this case governments, would have an obligation to share it with the subjects of the data.
I’d personally prefer no data collection, but that’s just where my vote goes. Unfortunately, in this hypothetical my vote was the less popular one:
> If it's useful, and the citizens vote for it, why shouldn't cities collect this data?
Could it eventually lead to fascism? Maybe, but so could enforcing the law with fast cars and guns if we aren't careful.
Everything will be according to the laws, but you forgot who is writing and passing the laws and in whose interest. It is rarely the interest of the common folk.
Do we prefer that speeding should only be punished when the wrong kind of people do it? Perhaps encourage everyone to make a habit of breaking the law, so that we can use it against them when they say something we don't like?
the only uniform thing would be data collection, loss of privacy, and being a victim of gov-t oppression.
"unbiased" - depends on the bias inherent to the training dataset and enforcement algorithm. Areas with more sensors will get more enforcement.
what if you a victim of false positive? you wont be able to appeal to "unbiased automated enforcement"
just look at recent events, when Trump just stripped some students of their greencards and deported them with 0 due process.
or took a guy with some random tatoo and sent one way to El Salvador...
By "bias inherent to the training dataset and enforcement algorithm", are you talking about anything other than "areas with more sensors"? These aren't exactly LLMs; it's kind of like saying vending machines might be biased because there are more of them in certain areas.
The areas where there are more of them will indeed be the areas where speeding rules get more strongly enforced (eg. school zones), so if you don't want cars speeding through your neighbourhood, you'd want to have better coverage. The areas with no enforcement would be the neighbourhoods being discriminated against, so is your view that it's better to have speed cameras nowhere?
As for due process, that seems entirely unrelated but if anything this puts you in a better spot. If you are a victim of false positive, the recording is right there, you download it from the web portal, review whether it was really a false positive or not, and if so, take it to court to dispute the charge. You don't have to he-said-she-said with a police officer who might, if they were feeling especially vindictive, plant some evidence on you during the traffic stop.
this is what fundamentally people don't understand. They look at one government failure (inability to enforce order on roadways), and cheer to spend taxpayer money to erect a techno-fascist surveillance state.
Sure, if you speed you will get ticket, but also if you post anything against the US government or against Israel, you will be tracked and thugs will come knocking your door.
It is fundamentally wrong to allow government to massively track and collect data on citizens, as it makes it trivial to track and harass people since all your data is in one place, one SQL query away and the state will use it against you
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.
When the police look up your info, do they see past citations? If so, it's a self-reinforcing cycle: people more likely to receive citations are more likely to have citations listed, and a cop who sees past citations might be less willing to let the driver off with a warning.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
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.
The main reason likely is that US race (treating Hispanic ethnicity as a race trumping nominal racial categories, so the other categories all are implicitly prefixed by “non-Hispanic”) is something like (in 5 categories):
59% White, 19% Hispanic, 13% Black, 6% Asian, 3% Other/Mixed.
Or, in two categories:
59% White alone, 41% Other
The two-group breakout takes far less data to get equal statistical utility for its smallest group when compared to the 5 group breakout (that's true even if you don't really care about the Other/Mixed catch-all group in the 5-group breakdown, but only the other four.)
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.
Good research? Even if studies which did not find this problem were not published, if the methodology is correct this study is correct regardless of external pressures.
> The cars know how fast they are going
They don't. My car's displayed speed is 5% higher than actual speed. It will change a little bit again after the next tire replacement.
> the cars know where they are
They don't. Not only are there no up to date maps for permanent roads, roadworks will add changes and in downtown gps will happily put you on the road on the other side of a high-rise.
> the cars know what the speed limit is
Again, up to date global, correct, precise maps do not exist and will not exist. Vision can't be relied on either, because bad luck can make a speed limit invisible.
Also cars can read speed limit signs pretty accurately. GPS is pretty accurate. It should not be possible to go highway speeds in areas that are purely residential and miles away from the highway.
Also we could make a more accurate map enforcement system. Not trivial but straightforward.
I'm taking about this specific research here.
> cars can read speed limit signs pretty accurately.
Only when they're not covered by trees, snow, other cars, are not damaged, workers didn't forget to uncover them, etc. And from time to time you will sync with a car in another lane just the right way to miss the sign.
> GPS is pretty accurate
Often. Yet, I will regularly get placed on the wrong road in larger cities. It doesn't have to be a highway speed problem - since the idea is automated enforcement, going 10k/h over the limit of the parallel street is already an issue.
> we could make a more accurate map enforcement system
Maybe in a distant future. Right now, we're at step 0: there's no publicly available accurate digital map of all streets. There are various segments in different agencies, there are global commercial maps, and there are community efforts. Until that's solved, the issue is moot.
You can always fail safe. Eg (extreme case) unless your car can prove to itself it is on a highway or a high-speed street it can only go 25 mph.
GPS attacks are real and even common in some areas. Do you know how much havoc could an adversary cause on traffic / cargo transport if this was implemented? Imagine a large American highway near a big city being blocked that way for days.
People can hack cars already.
We didnt always have to make everything to serve cars and we can stop anytime we want.
We're nearly there actually with technologies like Gatekeeper and OSs requiring account creation to use, so I expect to see it in my lifetime. The missing piece was the ability to classify content automatically in real time, but luckily AI came along.