June 2024

New Paper in PNAS: Race, Traffic Citations, and Police Stops

Our paper on race, traffic citations, and police stops came out in PNAS. As far as we know, it's the first road-level look at racial disparities in traffic enforcement using mobility data.

"The racial composition of road users, traffic citations, and police stops" came out in PNAS in June 2024. The idea: use anonymized mobile phone location data to estimate the racial composition of drivers on specific road segments, and then compare that against actual citation and police stop records — so we could see racial disparities in traffic enforcement at the road level, not just the jurisdiction level. Coauthors: Michael Smart, Nebiyou Tilahun, Shirin Askari, Zander Dennis, Houpu Li, and David Levinson. The paper picked up coverage from Block Club Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, NBC Chicago, and the Cornell Chronicle. Image: Chicago Police Ford Explorer Interceptor. Photo by ScottMLiebenson, CC BY-SA 3.0.