There is no need to worry about your car’s broken taillight in Philadelphia as the police couldn’t pull you over even if they wanted to.
The city is set to become the first in the United States
to ban police
from making traffic stops for minor violations, such as a busted light, operating a car without a certificate of inspection, or having a license plate that is not fastened securely.
The new law aims to promote “driving equity” and promote better police-community relations, the city said.
“Traffic stops are traumatic for drivers and scary for police officers,” Councilman Isaiah Thomas, the bill’s author, said in a statement. “Limiting them makes everyone safer and communities stronger.”
Thomas and other proponents of the bill claim traffic stops disproportionately involve drivers who are not white, and are thus discriminatory. Reducing the number of traffic stops, then, would reduce “discrimination while keeping the traffic stops that promote public safety,” the Philadelphia City Council said.
“To many people who look like me, a traffic stop is a rite of passage,” Thomas, who is black, continued. “We pick out cars, we determine routes, we plan our social interactions around the fact that it is likely that we will be pulled over by police.”
But it is not at all clear how stopping the enforcement of specific laws will make Philadelphia’s community safer. Taillights help cars navigate traffic. States such as Oregon, where staffing decisions led to lower traffic enforcement, show increases in traffic injuries and deaths. This is why, noticeably, no one is arguing the city should do away with taillight requirements altogether. They just want the police to stop enforcing this requirement.
Philadelphia is creating new problems for itself by trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. But that’s what happens when you convince yourself that everything is about race when, in reality, traffic rules are just about common sense.
