Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I hope to get to Black history soon, but I'm still working through white US history. There's so much of it!
Q: Why are Black people in the US so much more likely to die in traffic accidents than white people? Are Black folk more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI)? Is it street racing? Are y'all just bad drivers?
A: Hmm. I'm stumped! No one knows the answer to why this happens! Just kidding. It's racism. It's always racism.
1/N
A big portion of US traffic deaths are "SUV vs anything." "Anything" can be a smaller car, a cyclist, or a pedestrian.
Because of the systemically racist way that US infrastructure has been built, "SUV vs pedestrian" strikes are disproportionately likely to involve a white driver and Black child pedestrian. White SUVs drive in places where Black kids walk.
SUVs versus cyclists doesn't get much better. Again, this is an issue that affects Americans of all colors. But lack of safe cycling infrastructure means that places where Black people bike, tend to be significantly more dangerous than places where white people bike.
Per mile traveled, a Black cyclist is 4.5 times more likely to be killed than a white cyclist.
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(22)00155-6/fulltext
But what about DUIs? Drunk drivers are bad and should be stopped. DUI checkpoints are an invasion of privacy, but at least they're effective at catching drunk drivers, right?
1. DUI checkpoints are supposed to catch drunk drivers
2. Black drivers are *less* likely to be DUI than white drivers🙃
3. But DUI checkpoints are run by cops, who are incentivized to arrest Black people
4. So DUI checkpoints are disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods 🤦🏿♂️
5. So they catch very few drunk drivers.🤡
In Chicago, fewer than 4% of DUI checkpoints are in majority white neighborhoods, but 25% of drunk driving accidents are in white neighborhoods. 🙂🙃
In California, fewer than 1% of drunk driving arrests come from checkpoints.🤦🏿♂️
Cops are using DUI checkpoints as an excuse to stop Black drivers, then searching them and arresting them for other things. Because policing in America. Because racism.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9133.12558
And Black drivers that survive a bad crash, are often concussed and disoriented. First responders to a crash, are often police. I don't need to go much further into explaining what happens when an injured Black driver needing assistance encounters a typical cop, other than to say the motorist is as likely to get a taser as a tourniquet.
🤔 Maybe we should try making cops second responders instead of first responders...
There are several horrific incidents of "racist person gets really drunk and intentionally runs over Black children." Each one of these is awful, but fortunately, this isn't a widespread phenomenon. But... Some racist politicians want it to be. Seriously.
Several states recently passed laws decriminalizing driving a car into a crowd of "rioting" people and running them over.
No, I am not joking.
Florida passed their version of the law along with a change describing a riot as 3 people. Truly evil stuff.
https://www.vox.com/2021/4/25/22367019/gop-laws-oklahoma-iowa-florida-floyd-blm-protests-police
Similar laws have passed in several states with racist state legislatures. These laws were largely passed in a backlash response to Black Lives Matter protests.
There aren't that many intentional racists trying to run over Black kids. Each incident is terrible, but fortunately, they are extremely rare. Unfortunately, there are very many unintentionally racist people buzzing Black people in crosswalks.
White drivers in the US are *seven times* more likely to buzz past a Black pedestrian in the crosswalk than a white pedestrian. Sometimes this goes horribly wrong. Sometimes what looks like one pedestrian, is two pedestrians.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-pedestrians-race-20170322-story.html
"But won't self driving cars make all this safer?"
Again, not without addressing the racism.
This is another example of a common Machine Learning paradox: many ML systems are trained on datasets with not enough Black folk, and don't consider Black folk in the use cases, but those ML systems are used on Black communities. The harm is concentrated on us. 🙂🙃
Yes, this is another reason that the fake genius that rushed to put FSD on the road is a terrible human.
We can reverse many of these harms just by letting Black people vote. Then we get rid of the racist politicians and replace them with ones who will:
* Build safer bike infrastructure for everyone
* In particular, build infra that lets kids walk or bike to school and back safely
* Build towns and cities for humans, not cars
* Have a higher safety bar for self-driving cars than what that dude is getting away with
* Incentivize smaller cars / no cars. E-bikes over E-cars.
Again, you'll notice that the word "Black" doesn't appear anywhere in most of these interventions. They're better for all of us.
People in places like Atlanta are trying to make their city safer for pedestrians and cyclists of all colors. 👍🏿
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DFN7fNE8NYQ
But again, focus on, and understanding of, systemic racism, is necessary to make sure that this benefit is enjoyed by everyone.
Until the US is safely walkable or bikeable, people will continue to buy urban tanks in self-defense.
Since my kids were three years old, they've known to raise their hand as high as they can and wave it around whenever they hear a car engine start.
Some strangers smile and wave back when they see my kids do this. They think it's cute! But it's not really that cute.
@mekkaokereke There's also the issue of the lack of crosswalks in wide swaths of the US, and its effect on the incarceration rate for poor blacks.
This came up during Ferguson—if you need to go run an errand on foot in some areas during your lunch break, you can't walk to a crosswalk a mile away in time, so you jaywalk. Then you get ticketed for jaywalking. You don't go to the hearing because you can't afford to skip work. Now you have a criminal record for failing to show for the ticket.
@SethKaplan @mekkaokereke Absolutely. But as I noted in a different thread, when viewed through the lens of racism, it is a convenience ticketing/fundraising mechanism against poor blacks.
In general, petty fines have grown from car wars to a hallmark of police budgeting in low-tax states.
mekka okereke 
Janak J Parekh
Seth Kaplan
awwaiid (Brock Wilcox)