Posted on 07/23/2007 3:08:59 AM PDT by skimbell
After three years of tracking every traffic stop and reporting each incident in detail, Illinois police have a mountain of data, a few clear trends in how drivers are treated and difficult questions.
For the third year, police in 2006 pulled over about 2.5 million drivers. And just as in the first two years, minorities were stopped in larger percentages than population numbers would suggest, and were much more likely to be searched than whites.
But it's not clear who will answer questions
(Excerpt) Read more at qconline.com ...
As a white driver my own impression after living in a virtually all-white area of the country is that most drivers, whatever the ethnic makeup, are seriously disturbed. When I drive about seventy mph on Wisconsin’s I-90 and 94 I will be passed like I’m standing still by what it seems is every other driver on the road. People drive like maniacs on Wisconsin’s highways. And they’re just about all white from what I’ve observed.
The essence of good transportation is speed. People are making rational economic decisions, in the face of poor regulatory ones making speed limits ridiculously low, when compared to the capabilities of modern vehicles.
Going eighty miles an hour in packed circumstances is not exercising rational judgment in my opinion. I'm not against fast speeds in fact I'd like to see Wisconsin's speed limit raised five mph. However in my observations too many Wisconsin drivers exhibit poor habits and not just by speeding. Tailgating, risky passing maneuvers, and failure to obey common road rules and courtesy are huge problems here.
There are two studies, first the improper one this thread started off about and second, the The New Jersey Study linked to later on. The New Jersey study answered question 1. It was not based on arrests but on pictures of all drivers and their speed.
One way to look at that is to use victimization studies. A victimization survey gets data from victims who report the race of the offender, not the criminal justice system. These studies consistently confirm criminality rates observed in arrest and conviction studies.
Posted Online: Posted online: July 23, 2007 12:16 AM
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Studies suggest crops contribute to steamy weather
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Gene Strathdee D.D.S.
Releave the pain and suffering of migraines
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — All hot and sweaty this summer? It could be the corn.
Climatologists are building evidence that crops, particularly corn, are driving up dew points as they put water into the atmosphere through evaporation. They also may make corn-growing areas cooler and alter rain patterns.
Some say the extra moisture could even add energy to thunderstorms, with one study arguing that a 2001 tornado in Benson got a power boost from corn evaporation.
“I think there’s a new realization that there is a two-way interaction between weather and agriculture,” said Richard Raddatz, a climatologist at the University of Winnipeg, who has studied the transformation of the Canadian prairies from grassland to cropland.
In some ways, researchers are taking a second look at a 19th century adage — “rain follows the plow.” Popularized by Charles Dana Wilber in an 1881 book touting the agricultural promise of Nebraska, the phrase supported a grand notion that the western Great Plains, which in the early 19th century had been labeled the “Great American Desert,” could be transformed into a garden if people would expose its moist soil to the atmosphere.
Rainy years added credibility to the idea, but it was discredited as pseudo-science after homesteaders who flooded the plains were trapped by drought and bankruptcy.
Raddatz, however, said there is a growing body of research indicating that contemporary crops do indeed change the way water, heat and energy interact with the atmosphere.
By “transpiring” more heavily than the prairie grasses that preceded them, and in relatively short periods, crops can generate air movements that can lead to storms, and intensify the season during which water is cycled through the atmosphere.
Raddatz published a summary of studies of cropping and weather in February in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. They add some oomph to a 2002 study of dew points by Northern Illinois University climatologist David Changnon, which pinned a 40-year trend toward higher dew points in the Midwest, and record-high dew points during recent heat waves, on changes in farming. (Excerpt)
It's not as wild as Virginia but $160 is $160.
I've slowed down.
You are correct about the typical driver in Wisconsin though. It seems as though I now get passed by everything including the Amish horse drawn buggies on their way home from church.
I’m all for those other behaviors being ticketed (and taught). All too often, only speeding is, because it’s an easy revenue generator.
We already know that blacks commit homicide at a disproportionate rate. Blacks constitute nearly 50% of homicide victims and 94% of those are killed by other blacks. But due to the pernicious influence of the intellectual scourge of our time, political correctness; the study that might confirm this is unlikely to be released if it is ever conducted. It is so much easier to fan the fires of racial grievance.
“I also hear minority drivers are more likely to eat fried chicken. I hear having a greasy steering wheel makes it hard to drive and causes all of those accidents </sarc>”
That made me think of something that almost made me have an accident once.
I was driving home from work and I passed this car just in time to see a rather large woman stick a chicken leg completely in her mouth and pull out nothing but the bone. The jokes for that one write themselves.
It has to do with the "R" word. And that word is REALITY
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