Dr. Nichole Morris on Enforcement and Policing

[The one time I got a ticket for running a red light.]

If you have time and interest, check out my article in Minnpost today on policing and traffic safety. It's a very difficult and important issue, and I tried to cover some of the different perspectives that are out there about how and why to rethink how police are used in our transportation system.

There are a lot of sources for folks interested in diving into the topic, including The Untokening and Our Streets Minneapolis.  There's a good article on this topic in Vice that covers the Stanford Policing Project, a thorough effort aimed at reducing traffic stops. And I would absolutely recommend diving into the academic literature on automatic enforcement cameras (rather than the huge amount of online nonsense out there).

That said, one of the people I interviewed is Dr. Nichole Morris, who has been studying enforcement and traffic safety on the ground in the Twin Cities for years and is, in my experience, an exceedingly careful thinker when it comes to traffic safety.

Here's her full statement on the role of policing; I could not fit it all in the article: 

While this has been a very painful time, I'm thankful for the push to take some time to reflect on my notions about traffic safety and what role enforcement should play. I've long believed that fear of ticket is a motivator for drivers to comply with speed limits or other roadway laws. And while that still may be true for some drivers, if we look to the literature, there is little or, at best, mixed evidence that speeding citations result in significant long-term reductions in speeding or additional citations. This is doesn't support the case for big investments in in-person enforcement of speeding.  

I have been studying automated speed enforcement (ASE) for many years and I still believe it is an effective alternative to in-person enforcement. We have found a number of barriers regarding its implementation in Minnesota, but historically a majority of the public supports its use in limited forms. It is commonly stated that ASE or red light cameras are unconstitutional in Minnesota, but Frank Douma, a legal expert from the Humphrey School, will tell you that simply isn't true. It is not unconstitutional but was struck down because the city of Minneapolis did not have the legal authority to implement it. The state legislature does need to allow it and has declined to do so to-date. I am curious about how public perception holds today, if support has grown or diminished. There are still risks to automated enforcement regarding decision making on where to place cameras and how to implement a fee structure. Each decision could result in disproportional impacts or harm on minority populations if not done thoughtfully. Additional benefits of ASE are for reducing the likelihood of "speed discounting" so that white drivers aren't more likely to get away with a warning compared to BIPOC and most importantly, there is little risk of escalation or violence. It also doesn't function as a pretext for other crime enforcement which is doesn't do anything to make our roads safer but I believe simply delegitimizes our traffic laws.  

Ultimately, enforcement in any form treats the symptoms and not the causes of risky driving. There are multiple contributors, but one that we should first look at and treat is the design of our roads. We have overbuilt our roadways to allow drivers to feel too comfortable and drive fast. Near the end of our pedestrian study in St. Paul, compliance was quite high at our study sites, but those drivers who were still not yielding for us were almost always driving too fast. Speed is an undeniable component of the crisis we have with pedestrian safety. High speeds met with wide roadways make it less likely that drivers see a pedestrian waiting to cross and stop for them. We should not be expecting pedestrians to walk halfway into the roadway to be seen. We should add more bump-outs to put them safely closer into the driver's line on sight. The resulting narrowing will also slow drivers down. This type of work is already underway by cities, counties, and the state, but it will take serious reprioritization of funding to expedite to the level that our communities need. 

Two other culprits I see fueling the causes of risky driving are phone and vehicle manufacturers. There is little doubt in my mind that Google and Apple could make it far more difficult for drivers to use their phones while driving (pressing a button to say you aren't driving just isn't cutting it), they just have little desire to do it. We can't enforce our way out of phone-related distracted driving. It's too pervasive and too hard to detect. We need forcing functions and our government needs to start demanding it of these companies. There is also little doubt in my mind that vehicle manufacturers could make it harder to speed. Systems like GMs Supercruise can only operate where they have mapped the roadways, meaning they KNOW the speed limit, yet they allow drivers to exceed that limit with hands-off, feet-off comfort. It's insane that we allow the manufacturers to be accessories to drivers behaving recklessly on our highways. They don't have any desire to sell a vehicle that prevents you from speeding because who would buy it when other alternatives that let you speed to your heart's desire sit next to it on the car lot. Again, our government needs to demand it as the EU has been pursuing. This isn't some advanced form of level 5 automation that is years (or decades) down the road. It exists today. 

Lastly, in addressing high visibility enforcement for the crosswalk law,  I don’t have enough information yet speak to its efficacy within the STOP for Me program. We had great results for increasing driver compliance in our last study, but we observed smaller improvements with earlier treatment phases that included enforcement and education/outreach, and a bigger increase in stopping compliance was seen after we introduced low-cost engineering treatments (along with continued enforcement and education/outreach). However, we do not yet know whether the improved compliance was mostly from engineering, or if it was additive with the multi-pronged approach, or if time/duration of enforcement was a factor. We hope to have a clearer answer to that with future research. But, I'm not sure judging purely based on stopping compliance is good enough. I think we need to question and examine Stop for Me as holistically as possible to ensure that we aren't simply trading off one risk for another. It may be time to consider how the Stop for Me program can transition to something that meets the needs of the entire community and increases public safety.   

[List of names, disproportionately POCI, from the cover of the Vision Zero plan.] 

My personal take on this is evolving. I've long been focused on the how cars and our automobile-drenched cities have been a tool for injustice and harm, and tend to be somewhat myopic when it comes to the role of cars in cities. Yet structural racism in policing is an older, more deeply rooted problem, and thinking through how to address it in the 21st century is our fundamental challenge.

But the relationship between automobile violence and police violence is not straightforward. This fascinating book on how African-Americans relied on cars in the mid-20th century is worth your time (or this podcast interview here). Punitive traffic fines - like the ones that still plague Ferguson, Missouri - lead people into an unjust court system. For folks who lack stable housing, cars can be their only refuge.

At the same time, vehicle violence is increasing, and people of color are the most vulnerable to being killed or injured by reckless drivers. As we have seen, cars or trucks are increasingly used as weapons against people, demonstrators or not. People of color disproportionately live in places with bad air quality because of fossil fueled cars. And highways and county arterials have been designed for generations to privilege suburban and wealthy drivers over people living in urban neighborhoods. Even robot cars are racist.

And on and on...

This problem is not an easy thing to solve, which might be a reason why Alex Vitale's otherwise comprehensive book, The End of Policing, does not really mention traffic safety. I wish there were easy answers besides "redesign all our streets," which is not an easy answer at all.

I continue to believe we need some enforcement of speeding and parking rules in cities, which is why I believe we need automatic enforcement cameras to replace cops. Automatic enforcement is technologically simple, effective at solving the problem of dangerous driving, is vastly better than relying on police. We must try to craft a system that does not overly punish black, brown, or indigenous people, but holds every driver to the same standard.

I'd love to learn more about how to do this, and whether it's even possible.