Published On Sep 7, 2024
A part of the script that I ultimately deleted at the end because the video was getting too long:
One last thing. In addition to being a structural traffic control tool, stop signs are a social law enforcement tool. Police use them to pull over suspicious cars and protect the rest of us from potential criminals. The issue is there's no consistency with which they pull people over. It actually seems incredibly subjective how they pull people over, and in a society where justice is supposed to be blind, this amount of inconsistency leaves a lot of room for bias, which then leaves a lot of room for doing the wrong thing.
So if you’re someone who is concerned about over-policing, and you’re wondering why your social media posts about defunding the police and your demands that your city slash your police budget aren't working, try this: suggest areas where you can reduce the scope of the police. We already did that with marijuana, so let’s do that with stop signs. Create an environment where there is no stop sign to run and let the police focus on the actual criminals, like P Diddy or whoever.
Because when you have an intersection where people are regularly running the stop signs, it doesn’t mean they’re bad people; it means it’s a bad intersection. Except this guy (clip of guy at 5:30). He’s a bad person and I really wish the police were here to ticket him.