Biden just quietly took a key step to “decriminalize” traffic safety policy

The Biden administration recently took a crucial but little-noticed step toward improving public safety: It ended a deeply flawed police program that encouraged law enforcement across the country to use traffic stops as pretext to fight crime.

Now he has to make sure that what comes next is a step forward.

The program, Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS), was based on the idea that if more drivers are drawn to “high-crime” areas, even for minor infractions like broken taillights, police could reduce both traffic crashes and streets. crime simultaneously.

It seems like a smart way to fight crime and promote road safety. The only problem is that it does neither.

Study after study has found no clear link between aggressive traffic enforcement and reduced crime rates. This should come as no surprise, because the people arrested were never suspected of criminal activity.

In Nashville, a city that at one time championed this approach, researchers found no relationship between the number of police stops and crime levels. And when Fayetteville, North Carolina, reduced stops for minor violations, traffic crashes dropped, likely because police had more time to focus on actual safety-related stops.

What these programs have done is erode trust, infringe on civil liberties, and make the roads more dangerous for black drivers. In Nashville, black drivers were 68 percent more likely to be pulled over for non-moving violations. As the killing of Tire Nichols tragically underscores, these stops can escalate into violence and even death at the hands of the police.

The harms caused and the risks posed by programs like DDACTS are why more than seventy transportation safety and civil rights organizations joined my colleagues at the Policing Project to demand an end to the program. It’s also why the NAACP Legal Defense Foundation wrote that initiatives like this should be “neither tolerated nor encouraged.”

Ending federal support for DDACTS was a necessary fix, but it’s just the beginning of a larger reckoning needed with America’s traffic enforcement. In fact, there are many programs like DDACTS that should be reevaluated. High-volume traffic enforcement has become a backdoor to discriminatory over-policing, which the evidence shows does not fight crime or make our roads safer.

The way to fight crime is not with stops based on hunches and pretexts, but by proactively investing in communities and with targeted policing of people suspected of serious criminal behaviour.

On the other hand, there is a real road safety problem in this country. According to the US Department of Transportation, more than 350,000 people have died in crashes on American roads in the past decade. In 2023 alone, more than 44,000 people died in car accidents. This problem needs to be solved, urgently.

It’s time to return to proven methods of dealing with the traffic safety epidemic. We know that redesigning streets and improving vehicle safety standards can save lives and prevent road accidents and injuries. This is where transportation officials should focus their efforts. We need to dramatically increase investment in evidence-based strategies that are proven to save lives: for example, designing safer roads with better lighting; the creation of bike lanes and protected pedestrian crossings; require automakers to incorporate advanced safety features; and expand access to reliable and affordable public transportation.

We also need to invest more in rigorous research. For too long, traffic enforcement policies have been based on assumptions rather than evidence. We need high-quality studies that examine not only crash and crime rates, but also whether and to what extent law enforcement is working to reduce traffic crashes.

We should also explore the value of automated traffic enforcement, such as speed cameras with revenue-adjusted fines. Such studies should also consider the social costs they impose on the unemployed, such as whether fines are prohibitive for those living paycheck to paycheck. And above all, we should listen to the voices of the community on how to improve traffic safety.

The role of traffic enforcement should be strictly focused on the most dangerous driving behaviors, guided by data and observable safety hazards rather than hunches and pretext. It must be based on empirical evidence about the value of the application. It is also worth asking whether armed police are necessary for ordinary traffic enforcement.

Transforming our approach to traffic enforcement is no small task. But it is necessary if we want a future where our roads are safe, fair and equitable for everyone. The end of DDACTS should be a turning point—the moment when we begin to untangle the conflicting imperatives of crime reduction and traffic safety and chart a new vision for public safety on America’s streets. We should apply policies that have been proven to work, rather than looking for easy answers with discriminatory over-enforcement.

Farhang Heydari is an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University School of Law and senior advisor to the Policing Project.