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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

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.

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https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/black-drivers-are-less...

> 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.

Well yes, clearly the difference in the reason for initiating two otherwise equal stops can only be due to appearance.

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.

As a Black person, I don't much see a large difference between the two things you mentioned?

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.

Yeah I’d agree that definitely sounds like an oversimplification.

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.

Putting race aside for a moment - I completely agree, my experience (though not a huge sample set) is that most officers get to your car expecting confrontation, and when they don’t get it end up just issuing a warning / writing a less severe ticket. Given that it’s easy to get out of a ticket afterwards, why argue it on the side of the road?

Can you clarify how it is easy to get out of a ticket afterwards?

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.

It’s possible that you answered your own question.

I’ve usually just hired a lawyer, but went once myself, I’ve never paid more for the lawyer than I would have paid for the ticket so it’s usually been a 0%-50% discount to the ticket. But the real cost a speeding ticket is the 5%-30% increase in your insurance which could be hundreds of dollars a year ANNUALLY so it always just seemed cheaper short and long term to pay someone to deal with it (mind you I’m talking a grand total of four speeding tickets)

Pay a lawyer, which genrally is around the same cost as paying the fine, but you don't get it on your driver's record. If you are in Washington State, you have probably seen Jeannie Mucklestone's billboards on the side of the road attesting to her success rate in beating traffic tickets. My experience is that her claims are accurate.

It would also be interesting to see reporting on officer's perception of the offenders. Are we seeing the results of "passing the attitude test"?

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).

>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.

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.

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