Black drivers who obey all traffic laws get pulled over three times as often as whites do:
In traffic safety stops, being black has no influence: African Americans are not significantly more likely than whites to be stopped for clear traffic safety law violations. But in investigatory stops, a black man age 25 or younger has a 28 percent chance of being stopped for an investigatory reason over the course of a year; a similar young white man has a 12.5 percent chance, and a similar young white woman has only a 7 percent chance. And this is after taking into account other possible influences on being stopped, like how you drive.
Police focus investigatory stops on younger people, and so as people grow older they are less likely to be stopped in this way. But a black man must reach 50 – well into the graying years – before his risk of an investigatory stop drops below that of a white man under age 25. Overall, black drivers are nearly three times more likely than whites to be subjected to investigatory stops.
These differences are not lost on African Americans. According to our survey, African Americans view normal traffic stops as legitimate exercises of law enforcement, and do so at about the same rate as whites do. Indeed, the main difference is that blacks, unlike whites, are even more likely to view a traffic stop as legitimate when the officer lectures them on driver safety, taking that lecture as a reassuring cue that they were in fact stopped for their behavior, not for the color of their skin.
The Dish 