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The reason is that cops dramatically reduced the amount of traffic enforcement they engaged in ( https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1537100042623848448?t=7S8e
by polski-g 3y ago
The reason is that cops dramatically reduced the amount of traffic enforcement they engaged in ( https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1537100042623848448?t=7S8ep3lvPyWVTiMUoUD2VA&s=19 https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1537100042623848448?t=7... ). Turns out they don't want to risk a murder charge for $65k/year; I don't blame them, I wouldn't do it for $1m. Less traffic cops = more traffic crime.
Both of the dramatic increases of car accidents from the past decade coincided with BLM events: Ferguson and Floyd. See figure 1 - https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813337 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
- sgammon 3y agoCorrelation is not causation… ? In what manner does BLM protests affect traffic on a mass scale
- polski-g 3y agoThe protests are a red herring. It's the cops not wanting to be charged with murder so they just make less traffic stops.
- sgammon 3y agoI don’t think they were afraid of being charged with murder in the first place. Qualified immunity for police is quite strongly backed.
- slimrec77 3y agoYea I don't know about BLM protests but cops have vanished from enforcing traffic laws where I am. I would say someone blows a red light at least 50% of the time at a red light. There might just not be enough cops now though demographically. That would be my guess. The same way there aren't enough nurses.
- 8organicbits 3y agoI think this can be addressed by using speed cameras instead of chase cars to enforce speed limits. Tint and lights can be covered by periodic vehicle inspection. These are fairly common elsewhere, but the US chooses cops that give chase.
- mattmaroon 3y agoThere’s no real evidence that that enforcement leads to lower accident rates. Most people simply drive at whatever speed they think is safe and the ones who think that’s a faster speed find the tickets worth it. This happened at the same time screen's got distracting, so any correlation is likely coincidence. Similarly the United States once introduced a maximum highway speed that lowered highway speeds everywhere. Fatality rates went down, but it turned out to be unrelated, Similarly the United States once introduced a maximum highway speed that lowered highway speeds everywhere. Accident rates went down, they just happened to do it at the same time legislators were responding to the unsafe at any speed era. They lifted the maximum speed, speeds went up, and rates of accidents and fatalities kept going down.
- polski-g 3y agoThere is a strong positive effect that more enforcement of traffic laws reduces traffic accidents: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/effect-high-visibility-enforcement-motor-vehicle-crashes#note3 https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/effect-high-visibility-e...
- mattmaroon 3y agoWhile interesting, that is not correlating traffic laws with reduction of accidents generally, it is saying that using short term bursts of “ highly visible enforcement” does. that’s well and good and I suppose perhaps that has been curtailed also due to police staffing shortages, I don’t know that there is any evidence that the pre-pandemic background level of enforcement really had much effect. And from what I understand the level of accidents we are seeing now is basically on trend with what you would have expected if you just followed the trendline forward from 2019, even if the pandemic never happened.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoyeah, because all this enforcement is somehow happening stealthily. All these cops pulling people over but flipping on their ninja switch so no one sees them.