Why do police tend to stop older cars more often?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean this is common sense:

Adults with their crap together make good choices over time, go to college, get good jobs, but new nice cars. Respectable new cars are always fully insured.

Downtrodden sketchy adults make perpetual bad — at times illegal — choices. A beat up car driven by an adult is a red flag the person probably makes poor choices. Beat up old cars are 100x more likely to not have current registration, plates or insurance. And are far more likely to be driven by someone with priors and warrants. And poor life choices -> speeding and other moving infractions.

Was coming to post something along these lines.

This isn’t hard to figure out, people.

Disagree. We drive an old crappy car (1999 Subaru Forester) and make close to $300K HHI. We don't want a car payment. We also street park our car outside our rowhouse in Georgetown. A lot of my neighbors have nice cars that get scratched up due to street parking within months of purchase.

We will probably never buy a very nice car; it's simply not worth it to us. Plus, the dings and scratches from street parking would drive me nuts. Oh, I also have a 10 minute door-to-door commute to my office. We put about 3.5K miles per year on our car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even when there is seemingly nothing wrong

Institutional ageism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean this is common sense:

Adults with their crap together make good choices over time, go to college, get good jobs, but new nice cars. Respectable new cars are always fully insured.

Downtrodden sketchy adults make perpetual bad — at times illegal — choices. A beat up car driven by an adult is a red flag the person probably makes poor choices. Beat up old cars are 100x more likely to not have current registration, plates or insurance. And are far more likely to be driven by someone with priors and warrants. And poor life choices -> speeding and other moving infractions.

Was coming to post something along these lines.

This isn’t hard to figure out, people.

Disagree. We drive an old crappy car (1999 Subaru Forester) and make close to $300K HHI. We don't want a car payment. We also street park our car outside our rowhouse in Georgetown. A lot of my neighbors have nice cars that get scratched up due to street parking within months of purchase.

We will probably never buy a very nice car; it's simply not worth it to us. Plus, the dings and scratches from street parking would drive me nuts. Oh, I also have a 10 minute door-to-door commute to my office. We put about 3.5K miles per year on our car.

Your anecdote does not contradict PP, who prefaces her statements by saying "more likely".

[Anonymous]

Because people with older cars and cars that are beat up are more prone to having outstanding warrants.

Watch an episode of Live PD. Most people get pulled over for something innocent, like a light out, and the cops end up finding out they have an outstanding warrant. This past weekend the police pulled over a guy walking on the edge of the road (but in the road) just to tell him he needed to walk in the grass not the road and they found out he had an outstanding warrant. Bad luck for him, but good for the cops.

[Anonymous]

My tenant is a young black man and I still remember, when we were signing the contract at a Starbucks near my mostly white neighborhood, his friend and wife were just sitting in their somewhat older car waiting for us.

1 police car showed up and then quickly followed up with 3 more police cars. No problems at the end. I always thought it was weird for the police to pick them out the way they did. Four police cars??? Till this day, I still think their skin color and the way they dressed were the only reasons.

[Anonymous]

Irresponsible adults -> drive crappy cars -> commit crimes inc. driving violations

Responsible adults -> late model car -> more to lose, so follow the law and drive more responsibly

[Anonymous]

duh.. because there are more older cars on the road. it's just math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean this is common sense:

Adults with their crap together make good choices over time, go to college, get good jobs, but new nice cars. Respectable new cars are always fully insured.

Downtrodden sketchy adults make perpetual bad — at times illegal — choices. A beat up car driven by an adult is a red flag the person probably makes poor choices. Beat up old cars are 100x more likely to not have current registration, plates or insurance. And are far more likely to be driven by someone with priors and warrants. And poor life choices -> speeding and other moving infractions.

Absolutely correct.