Robot, Do You Know Why I Stopped You?

With fewer police officers conducting traffic stops and fewer reasons to pull autonomous cars over, autonomous vehicles may offer more significant benefits than letting you Netflix-and-chill: diminished racial profiling in traffic stops. Law enforcement officials are able to exercise considerable discretion when pulling cars over--how fast is too fast over the speed limit, what qualifies as distracted driving, what qualifies as driving too close to the next car. Many violations permitting that discretion will be largely eliminated after autonomous cars are widespread, meaning the ability of offending police officers to racially profile during traffic stops will be curtailed. Other technologies that remove human discretion from traffic violations are already producing similar results. For example, stoplight cameras reduce the disparity between the racial composition of the communities where they're installed and the people who are fined compared to similar citations issued by police officers.