In the past years of getting my license, it has come to my understanding that police officers tend to focus their attention on people with older, lower class vehicles then they do to brand new upper class vehicles. Please be advised I am basing this off of personal observation.
It doesn’t matter what state you live in I’m sure it has happened to you or someone you know. Officer’s seem to place their judgment off of the type of vehicle your driving and the color of the vehicle. I was recently driving down the road in a 20 mph school zone, when a lady drove around the corner and almost hit my vehicle she then decided to book it about 45 mph. To my surprise there was a police car in the opposite on coming traffic lane, that had witnessed the entire thing. To shock me even more, the lady drove off and the cop continued to go among his merry way without even a hesitation. This lady continued her 45mph drive through the school zone and almost through a red light.
My question towards why the police officer did nothing was tearing away at me, so I decided to post it on my personal face book. With that I was flooded with question’s about if the young lady’s car was nice. I then replied with explaining that the car she was driving seemed as if it was brand new, and asked why.
I received my answer’s from many different people explaining that “The police have a record for not stopping people driving high class brand new cars.” Another person wrote on my face book, “They only stop lower class cars.” This however sparked my interest immediately, can this be true I thought to myself. Of course this wasn’t the end of my investigation so I started researching the topic online. I came across this website where people are having a discussion on how they personally feel about if police officers discriminate against the type of car you drive.
In the discussion I read, it shows that majority of the comments are talking about how their car or their friends car’s are getting vehicle profiled, and police officers have pulled them over many times. These people strongly feel it had absolutely nothing to do with the traffic law’s but more so with the car itself. However, in this discussion many people are explaining that the more sporty your car is, the more likely you are to get pulled over. The less sporty your car is the less likely you are to be vehicle profiled.
I also started noticing in this discussion that many people believe it all depends on the color of your car as well. The brighter color your car is the easier it is to be caught in vehicle profiling. Police officer’s usually go for bright red cars, due to the fact that red is labeled as a fast color, and it said that if your car is bright red, your insurance will be higher too. I have a relative who was stopped because he had a red mustang and the police officer just checked his id and let him go. He wasn’t speeding, or breaking any traffic violations at all.
This goes to show you that vehicle profiling is not just in the state your in, but also all over the country. Do police officer’s really take it to the extreme, and should we have to pay extra just for a certain color? Or is vehicle profiling something that should be addressed?