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> And in the US it’s likely even worse since a traffic stop is one of the most dangerous interactions you can have with the police. Can you expand further on t

> And in the US it’s likely even worse since a traffic stop is one of the most dangerous interactions you can have with the police. Can you expand further on this, or provide some statistics/sources? It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous unless you're not cooperating. Of course there are extremely rare cases where accidents happen, but without doing any research would be willing to guess it's less than .001% of all stops.

pvaldes 7y ago
> It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous Is a rare event but it seems that is still dangerous for both drivers and police "It is not uncommon for routine traffic stops to escalate into a violent situation... At least 300 officers have been killed by drivers or other occupants of vehicles involved in traffic stops or pursuits" source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544.766&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544... Googling "killed by police traffic stop US" returns a depressing amount of positives also
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  I appreciate the response, but I don't think you really took the time to investigate and cherry-picked a single quote to prove your point. The source you listed is actually disproving your premise. > ... the risk of police victimization, police homicides and assaults were found to be very infrequent occurrences during traffic encounters. The results of this study cast doubt on the Court’s assumption of danger during the routine police–citizen traffic encounter. > Despite anecdotal accounts that show particular instances of danger confronted by law enforcement officers, there are few research findings or statistics to support the assumption of police dangerousness during traffic encounters. > Most, if not all of the assertions that routine traffic stops are dangerous rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)’s data on police homicide and assault victimization during traffic encounters. All of these assertions share one crippling methodological flaw. They fail to appropriately account for the frequency of the police activity in the risk calculation So yes, there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops, but there are also a very large number of total traffic stops. Police work is inherently dangerous, and if you're stopping a large number of people you're going to run into dangerous people with a much higher chance of a fatality. To assert that the average person be fearful of a traffic stop because some people were killed is just completely false. Police work is dangerous, I imagine they go into any situation with the assumption the person is dangerous.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    > there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops From a US point of view 300 killed among several thousands millions of people can be seen as (statistically) reasonable and the article reflects that point of view accurately. The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" (specially if most of this people are black or hispanic) is also hard to swallow.
    - kuzimoto 7y ago
      > The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. I think you're right, the US has a bad image when it comes to crime. > The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" From what statistics I've been able to find, it's more-or-less stayed the same or even gone down slightly (for unarmed individuals shot by police). It's hard to know for sure as it's a relatively small amount and difficult to deduce any trends. Media coverage of these events seems to be disproportionately higher - however. This is my opinion so it could be completely wrong, but it's hard to believe police are going to shoot someone that is complying with orders, hasn't committed a violent crime, and is not showing any signs of aggression.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        > more-or-less stayed the same We talk about an accumulative number of victims. The only acceptable number of innocent people killed by police is zero. If the number of casualties has not stopped growing despite learning from (lots and lots and lots of) past errors, the number of victims is obviously increasing and the problem has not been addressed accurately still.

pvaldes 7y ago

> It seems highly unlikely that a traffic stop could be at all dangerous Is a rare event but it seems that is still dangerous for both drivers and police "It is not uncommon for routine traffic stops to escalate into a violent situation... At least 300 officers have been killed by drivers or other occupants of vehicles involved in traffic stops or pursuits" source: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544.766&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544... Googling "killed by police traffic stop US" returns a depressing amount of positives also

kuzimoto 7y ago
I appreciate the response, but I don't think you really took the time to investigate and cherry-picked a single quote to prove your point. The source you listed is actually disproving your premise. > ... the risk of police victimization, police homicides and assaults were found to be very infrequent occurrences during traffic encounters. The results of this study cast doubt on the Court’s assumption of danger during the routine police–citizen traffic encounter. > Despite anecdotal accounts that show particular instances of danger confronted by law enforcement officers, there are few research findings or statistics to support the assumption of police dangerousness during traffic encounters. > Most, if not all of the assertions that routine traffic stops are dangerous rely on the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)’s data on police homicide and assault victimization during traffic encounters. All of these assertions share one crippling methodological flaw. They fail to appropriately account for the frequency of the police activity in the risk calculation So yes, there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops, but there are also a very large number of total traffic stops. Police work is inherently dangerous, and if you're stopping a large number of people you're going to run into dangerous people with a much higher chance of a fatality. To assert that the average person be fearful of a traffic stop because some people were killed is just completely false. Police work is dangerous, I imagine they go into any situation with the assumption the person is dangerous.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > there are going to be a number of fatalities during traffic stops From a US point of view 300 killed among several thousands millions of people can be seen as (statistically) reasonable and the article reflects that point of view accurately. The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" (specially if most of this people are black or hispanic) is also hard to swallow.
  - kuzimoto 7y ago
    > The problem is that from a non US point of view and comparing with other places with similar number of interactions this feels like a outrageous and strangely high number. I think you're right, the US has a bad image when it comes to crime. > The ever increasing number of cases of perfectly innocent people in their way to home killed by police by mistake or by "mistake" From what statistics I've been able to find, it's more-or-less stayed the same or even gone down slightly (for unarmed individuals shot by police). It's hard to know for sure as it's a relatively small amount and difficult to deduce any trends. Media coverage of these events seems to be disproportionately higher - however. This is my opinion so it could be completely wrong, but it's hard to believe police are going to shoot someone that is complying with orders, hasn't committed a violent crime, and is not showing any signs of aggression.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      > more-or-less stayed the same We talk about an accumulative number of victims. The only acceptable number of innocent people killed by police is zero. If the number of casualties has not stopped growing despite learning from (lots and lots and lots of) past errors, the number of victims is obviously increasing and the problem has not been addressed accurately still.