Data journalism busts speeding cops, wins Pulitzer

Post by fyi80 » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 3:15 AM UTC

uxp wrote: post #50

ryderm wrote: post #22

> The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. Well, driving above the speed limit while on duty is required. Why would that be included in the statistic? And driving 90 is hardly out of the ordinary where I'm from. That being said, driving 120 or 130 while off duty is clearly a bad idea.

> Well, driving above the speed limit while on duty is required. Admittedly, it's not really physically possible to catch up to someone traveling at 90 mph when you're limited to 65, however they have lights and sirens that, according to law, they are required to use while responding to an emergency or incident, which broadly covers speeding. According to the original article, more than half of all incidents occurred…

Post by auctiontheory » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 3:19 AM UTC

Post by catshirt » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 3:21 AM UTC

fyi80 wrote: post #61

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of problems with doing things like this. The first is that significant speed differentials are extremely dangerous. Uncalibrated speedometers are very common and very inaccurate. Anything that causes guaranteed enforcement is going to reduce safety because people will start religiously following their speedometer instead of the normal flow of traffic, so now you have people driving all different sp…

Number of times I have stopped for gas on a 30-mile stretch of local toll road: 0. Why would someone stop, just to get an excuse to speed later, at the same average? The few people drag-racing, maybe. Not the vast majority who want to to arrive at destination ASASP. You are conjuring up a ridiculous hypothetical and claiming it is the common case.

Post by darkarmani » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 3:31 AM UTC

corwinstephen wrote: post #26

jere wrote: post #10

>The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people. That's such a horrifying statistic if true. Even at their peak, homicide offending rates in the US were at around 20 per 100,000; assault rates about 10 times as high: http://bjs.gov/con…

Frustrating? Yes. Shocking? No. Did anyone really believe that taking a job as a police officer somehow suppressed these people's natural desire to drive fast? Hell, that's probably what make them join the force in the first place. Sure, it's irresponsible and illegal for off-duty officers to speed, but it's also irresponsible and illegal for regular citizens to speed, and yet that doesn't seem to stop them from doin…

Post by civilian » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 3:35 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #48

civilian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh! So we're at 3 deaths/maims per year for X number of cops, vs. 12 deaths per 100k for the general populace. It's all about the division at this point. How many cops were there in that region? If it's just Miami-Dade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami-Dade_Police_Department Officers 3,034 soooo.... 3 * (100/3) = 100 deaths per 100k of police population. Which is 8x the normal rate. It's bad, but it's not too outr…

Apples and oranges. The number in the article is 'crashes caused by officers driving at high speed ', the general pop statistic is all vehicular deaths. Similarly, deaths per 100k is the rate of victimisation amongst the population. Deaths per number of officers is a rate of offending, not victimisation.