On 4/8/2015 gardenman said: The vast, vast majority of police stops are perfectly routine and pose no risk to either party involved. It's the very rare exception where something goes wrong and someone gets injured/killed. I'd be surprised if the number of bad incidents were more than one in a hundred thousand stops. The police stop cars routinely and very, very rarely do things go wrong for either party. Creating a complicated new system to solve a problem that's virtually non-existent is not an especially efficient use of tax dollars.
Agree. These numbers are several years old but shows how that would not be very efficient use of tax dollars.
The most common reason for contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop. In 2008, an estimated 44% of face-to-face contacts that U.S. residents had with police occurred for this reason. About half of all traffic stops that year resulted in a traffic ticket. Approximately 5% of all stopped drivers were searched by police during a traffic stop.
These findings are based on the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), a BJS survey that interviews U.S. residents about their contacts with police during the previous 12 months. Persons who reported more than one instance of face-to-face contact during the year are asked to describe the most recent occurrence. The PPCS has been conducted about every three years since 1999.
Summary findings
An estimated 17.7 million persons age 16 or older indicated that their most recent contact with the police in 2008 was as a driver pulled over in a traffic stop. These drivers represented 8.4% of the nation’s 209 million drivers.
A greater percentage of male drivers (9.9%) than female drivers (7.0%) were stopped by police during 2008. White (8.4%), black (8.8%), and Hispanic (9.1%) drivers were stopped by police at similar rates in 2008.
Stopped drivers reported speeding as the most common reason for being pulled over in 2008.
Approximately 85% of drivers pulled over by police in 2008 felt they had been stopped for a legitimate reason. In 2008, about 74% of black drivers believed police had a legitimate reason for stopping them compared to 86% of white and 82% of Hispanic drivers.
In 2008 about 5% of traffic stops led to a search of the driver, the vehicle, or both. Police were more likely to search male drivers (7.4%) than female drivers (1.6%).
Black drivers (12.3%) were about three times as likely as white drivers (3.9%) and about two times as likely as Hispanic drivers (5.8%) to be searched during a traffic stop in 2008.
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