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California Traffic Penalties Are Highest in US and Disproportionately Affect Black and Latinx Drivers, Report Finds

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Policeman stops woman driver to give her a traffic ticket for speeding. He takes her driver's license.
A report by nonprofit SPUR analyzing stop data from seven locations in the state finds that California's huge amount of traffic ticket penalties are disproportionately affecting lower-income communities of color. (fstop123/Getty Images)

California has among the highest traffic ticket penalties in the country, often putting significant burdens on people with lower incomes. San Francisco nonprofit SPUR analyzed traffic stop data in seven locations across the state, looking at who was stopped by police, why they were stopped, and whether or not they were given a citation. To learn more on what they found, KQED Radio News Anchor Natalia Navarro spoke with SPUR Economic Justice Policy Director Jacob Denney.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

NATALIA NAVARRO: The report published yesterday says research found that while the goal of traffic citations is presumably to discourage dangerous behavior, data is actually showing that in many cities and counties, traffic stops actually have nothing to do with actual road safety. Can you tell me more about that? How did you come to that conclusion? 

JACOB DENNEY: When you look at traffic stop data, there’s moving equipment and nonmoving. Moving stops are the traffic stops that are usually related to safety. Those are the things you’re most concerned about. That’s people speeding, running red lights, taking a ride on red when they shouldn’t. The kind of thing that can endanger other people. Equipment stops tend to be stops related to care or maintenance of your vehicle. The most common equipment stop we see in many cities, including San Francisco, is your license plate being affixed incorrectly. Now, that stop doesn’t have anything to do with road safety or driver safety or making sure that people don’t harm other people with their vehicles or endanger themselves. So equipment stops are stops related to the equipment of your vehicle. They tend to be things like dice hanging from your mirror or a license plate affixed incorrectly. And what we see is that for Black and Latinx drivers across California, equipment stops are a larger share of stops than moving stops, which are the stops related to safety.

Let’s turn to more of the human aspect of this. Many people cannot afford to pay these high traffic-violation fees. How does that impact the lives of Californians compared to other states? 

We have some of the highest traffic citations in the country. Those traffic citations are driven in large part by fees that have been added on over time and that have increased citations from, say, a base citation of $25 or $30 to over $230 for a smaller speeding ticket. There are many other large tickets or large dollar amounts attached to tickets that people get impacted with when they receive them. And when someone receives a ticket, they can’t afford to pay. They have to make choices. Oftentimes, they have to choose between paying for the ticket or paying for their electricity, or changing their grocery consumption, or whether or not they’re going to buy school clothes for their kids. And when we look at patterns of enforcement, we see a disproportionality in enforcement, which means that certain communities are going to receive more traffic tickets — and are receiving more traffic tickets — than others. And that means that people are going to have to go through this process again and again because of where they labor and who they are.

What solutions have you seen that you think are promising? 

Ending pretext stops is a pretty essential component to changing disproportionality in traffic enforcement. So I think as we interrogate traffic enforcement and we think about alternatives and what the ideal way would be, we have to also kind of marry that with the idea that our fines and fees are too high, they cost too much money, and there’s no reason for them to be this high. People don’t change their driving behavior because of how expensive tickets are. If they did, we wouldn’t have the incredible amount of traffic tickets that are administered in California every year. So I think the emphasis should be on identifying and investigating alternative forms of enforcement that can reduce bias, restricting enforcement that’s biased and that disproportionately impacts communities of color and low-income communities, but then also dramatically reducing our fines and fees so they’re less punitive. 

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