North Carolina Highway Traffic Study

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North Carolina Highway Traffic Study

W. R. Smith / D. Tomaskovic-Devey / M. T. Zingraff / H. Marcinda Mason / P. Y. Warren

The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study is a multi-method investigation of the phenomenon popularly referred to as driving while black, or more generically as racial profiling and racial targeting. There is widespread belief that African Americans and other minorities are at increased risk of police stops compared to white drivers. A 1999 Gallup Poll, for example, found that 56 percent of whites and 77 percent of African Americans believed that racial profiling exists (Newport 1999). In our own survey of adult, North Carolina-licensed drivers, 30 percent of whites and 80 percent of African Americans reported that they believed that African Americans were more likely than other drivers to be pulled over by the police. Racial profiling and racial targeting refer to a fairly specific police practice of using race as an explicit criterion for deciding which cars to stop or search. Driving while black is a less focused term, but summarizes a widespread belief in minority communities that they are singled out for harsher treatment than are white drivers.