A recent investigation by the left-wing ProPublica laments that speed cameras are disproportionately ticketing black drivers in cities such as Chicago, even though the technology allows for race-neutral enforcement.
The investigation concluded that drivers from mostly-black neighborhoods are receiving more than twice as many citations from the automated technology than drivers from mostly-white neighborhoods. Authors Emily Hopkins and Melissa Sanchez frame this data point with an activist’s claim that a “punitive approach” to traffic safety laws still upholds “structural racism”:
For all of their safety benefits, the hundreds of cameras that dot the city — and generate tens of millions of dollars a year for City Hall — have come at a steep cost for motorists from the city’s black and Latino neighborhoods. A ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found…
