Traffic Problems, Characteristics of

Traffic-related problems historically have not been a primary concern for citizens, academic researchers, and law enforcement practitioners. Community policing and problem-solving efforts are routinely developed for and focused on violent crime or quality-of-life offenses in a particular neighborhood and then evaluated on their success or failure within those limited focus areas. Traffic problem responses, when thought of at all, are usually a reaction to a high-profile crash such as a child wandering into the street and being struck by a passing vehicle. When an incident of this sort occurs, police may be immediately directed to the area for a period of time and tasked with high-visibility enforcement of minor traffic violations, primarily those related to vehicle speed. After a short period of time, the police generally move back to other nontraffic duties and the problem is deemed successfully resolved.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year in the United States nearly twice the number of people die as a result of traffic crashes as are killed in homicidal violence. A recent study commissioned by the American Automobile Association (AAA) and conducted by Cambridge Systematics estimated the annual economic cost of U.S. fatal and nonfatal traffic crashes at over $299 billion. In this same study, it was further determined that U.S. citizens annually spend 4.8 billion hours and consume 3.9 billion gallons of fuel sitting in traffic congestion in the course of their daily activities. This amounts to an additional cost of over $97 billion, bringing the total dollar cost of the two primary traffic problems—crashes and congestion—to almost $300 billion a year in the United States alone.

Ronald Clarke and John Eck define a police problem as “a recurring set of related harmful events in a community that members of the public expect the police to address.” The sheer number of daily traffic crashes and traffic congestion and their associated human and economic costs obviously meets this problem definition. This entry looks at the common characteristics of the two primary traffic problems: traffic crashes and traffic congestion and the harms associated with them.