aggarwal2025high
BibTeX
@article{aggarwal2025high,
title={High-frequency location data show that race affects citations and fines for speeding},
author={Aggarwal, Pradhi and Brandon, Alec and Goldszmidt, Ariel and Holz, Justin and List, John A and Muir, Ian and Sun, Gregory and Yu, Thomas},
journal={Science},
volume={387},
number={6741},
pages={1397--1401},
year={2025},
publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science}
}
Abstract
Prior research on racial profiling has found that in encounters with law enforcement, minorities are punished more severely than white civilians. Less is known about the causes of these encounters and their implications for our understanding of racial profiling. Using high-frequency location data of rideshare drivers in Florida (N = 222,838 individuals), we estimate the effect of driver race on citations and fines for speeding using 19.3 million location pings. Compared with a white driver traveling the same speed, we find that racial or ethnic minority drivers are 24 to 33% more likely to be cited for speeding and pay 23 to 34% more money in fines. We find no evidence that accident and reoffense rates explain these estimates, which suggests that an animus against minorities underlies our results.
Notes and Excerpts
Clever identification strategy.
They discuss the alternate theory that the discrepancies are due to higher police presence in certain areas (which in turn could be reflective of actual higher crime rates), but mention that they control for location. I’d like to know more about how exactly it is that they’re controlling for location. Too coarse and it might not rule out that alternative theory.