The following is an editorial that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, calling for vast reductions in the number of traffic stops.  The italicized text is the editorial and the bold text is my comments on the editorial author's content:

In one video after another this year, we've seen police stops of African American drivers go violently, terribly wrong. Think of Walter Scott, killed by a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., after a traffic stop for a broken tail light. Or Sandra Bland, pulled over for failure to signal a lane change, and after a confrontation with a Texas state trooper, hauled off to jail, where she died. Or Samuel Dubose, fatally shot by a University of Cincinnati police officer after being pulled over for a missing license tag.

A traffic stop for a missing brake light is wrong, unless the cop suspects the driver of something else.  As the editorial author explains, Whren v U.S. allows cops to make pretextual stops.  A stop for failure to signal a lane change when there is no other traffic falls into the same category.  But missing a license tag is suggestive of a stolen vehicle and is a fully justified stop.

They should never have been stopped by police at all. Nor should the vast majority of Americans pulled over in our national ritual of the traffic stop.

Vast majority is a vast overstatement.  I drove over 100 miles on the streets and freeways of Los Angeles and Orange Counties on Friday, 8/14/2015.  I lost count of how many unsafe lane changes, people texting and driving, red lights being run and more. 

In a unanimous but highly regrettable 1996 decision, Whren vs. United States, the Supreme Court held that any traffic infraction can justify a police stop, even if the officer's actual motive is "pretextual" — that is to say, the officer really wants to search for drugs and weapons in the car because of the "profile" of the driver. Given the countless violations all drivers commit daily — exceeding the speed limit, staying too long in the passing lane, following too closely — the effect of Whren is that police are almost completely shielded from legal review of their decision to stop a driver.

If the court makes a unanimous decision like this, and the people believe it to be wrong, there is an established process.  Change the law.  Given the number of traffic accidents in this country, most of the safety violations described above should result in traffic stops and fines. 


But minor traffic violations, by definition, pose no significant immediate threat and represent only a marginal increase in risk to road safety. On the other hand, every stop brings a substantial danger to the law enforcement officer: Car and motorcycle accidents and being struck by vehicles are a leading cause of death in the line of duty. Stops also produce a significant risk of escalation and confrontation, with tragic outcomes.

"...no immediate threat" isn't the standard.  If police officers were properly trained in how to deescalate rather than responding to attempts to bait them, traffic stops would be much safer.

Any purported benefit of frequent traffic stops ... has to be set off against the resentment they engender. - We do not need to accept the traffic stop as the price of public safety. I have driven many miles in other countries, and I have never seen a traffic stop of the sort that I witness nearly daily in California. While precise data are difficult to secure, Americans experience police traffic stops at a rate of about 9,900 per 100,000 citizens, according to a Justice Department survey. By contrast, government reports in England and Wales show traffic stops occur at a rate of only about 2,200 per 100,000; and in France, 2,760 per 100,000. My calculations for Spain, based on its raw number of citations, is about 3,000 per 100,000.

Let's see.  He mentions England, Wales, France and Spain.

The United States has roughly 806 cars per 1,000 people.

Spain is at 593 per 1,000.

France has only 578 per 1,000.

The United Kingdom (both England and Wales) is at 519 per 1,000

When we look at the deaths per 100,000 vehicles annually and per 100,000 people annually, Spain, France and the United Kingdom are indeed much safer than the U. S.  That doesn't begin to prove that there is a causal connection between the lower number of traffic stops in the U. S. has anything to do with those numbers. 

The remarkable fact is that fewer traffic stops do not result in more fatal accidents, according to World Health Organization data. The above-mentioned countries, which have aggressive driving cultures, have 40% to 60% of the U.S. fatal accident rate, despite traffic stops being made 20% to 30% as often.

Again, there is no connection in this data proving the contention.

One reason for this divergence is that these countries, like many others, enforce their speeding laws primarily through radar systems that automatically generate tickets. Red-light cameras also account for a significant proportion of fines. The benefit of camera systems is not only that they permit more extensive enforcement of laws against genuinely dangerous driving behavior, but they do so without racial bias. No camera has ever Tased or shot an unarmed driver.

That would be great if the U. S. court system did not make it so difficult for cities to use red light cameras and radar systems for speeding.  That little thing called the presumption of innocence is a bit of a problem in using those methods for traffic enforcement.  Not to mention that states like California use traffic tickets from red light cameras as a revenue tool rather than to promote traffic safety.

Americans, both politically progressive and conservative, are coming to realize that aspects of our criminal justice policies put us out of step with the developed nations we regard as peers, from our apparent tolerance of rampage shootings to our system of mass incarceration. Traffic stops too are more typically associated with countries with notoriously corrupt police forces, where they are the pretext for a shakedown.

Indeed, the Department of Justice's report on the police department in Ferguson, Mo., made clear that traffic stops were used primarily as a means of milking minority drivers (who are less likely to contest their citations) for traffic fines.

True.  But that doesn't mean the traffic stop, used properly as a means to promote and improve traffic safety, isn't a valuable tool.

So no legitimate concern with road safety compels us to continue with the traffic stop, even if it is legally permissible. Any municipal police chief can simply undertake a quiet, and easily reversible, experiment: Reserve the traffic stop for objectively and imminently dangerous road behaviors, and observe the effects on crime rates and traffic accidents. Local, state and federal government also could encourage the use of red-light and speed cameras, which would surely issue as many or more tickets as traffic patrol officers.  Any purported benefit of frequent traffic stops — for example the slim chance of apprehending wanted criminals — has to be set off against the resentment they engender.  Curtailing traffic stops wouldn't solve the problem of police violence against blacks and Latinos, but it would reduce exposure to "driving while black" harassment and the collateral harms of the legal process. Police could concentrate their efforts on serious crime and immediate safety risks while traffic engineers implemented alternative ways to improve road safety. And all citizens could enjoy more freedom from overzealous and unproductive policing.

A conclusion without any real evidence to support it.