Every year, police officers conduct tens of millions of traffic stops across the United States. These stops are supposed to keep communities safe by addressing dangerous behaviors that injure and kill people – like speeding, reckless driving, and drunk driving.

But New Jersey’s traffic code includes many violations that have little, if anything, to do with public safety. These include minor infractions like expired inspections, cracked or obstructed windshields, and broken taillights. When a driver is pulled over for one of these minor violations, that is known as a non-safety traffic stop.

In fact, New Jersey’s traffic code is so broad that many, if not most, drivers are likely to break the law on any given trip. For example, if a car has an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, an officer can – and is technically mandated to – pull the driver over for an obstructed windshield.

But such minor infractions are rarely related to crashes. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, out of the 11,750 vehicles involved in fatal crashes in New Jersey from 2010-2023, 45 – or 0.38% – of those vehicles had issues with lights, windows, mirrors, or windshields. Each fatal crash in New Jersey is a tragic loss of life that should be addressed by rooting out dangerous driving, but minor traffic code infractions play a statistically insignificant part in causing them. Law enforcement resources would better benefit public safety if they no longer were required to focus on technicalities like broken taillights and instead focused on dangerous driving.

Excessive non-safety traffic stops are deeply problematic.

1. Non-safety traffic stops damage the relationship between the public and police, making communities less safe. Non-safety violations are often used to conduct pretextual stops – in which an officer uses a minor traffic violation to initiate a stop and pursue further investigation in hopes of discovering more serious offenses. These stops cause significant confusion and distress for drivers because they force dangerous, high-pressure interactions with police officers over trivial infractions that are inconsequential to road safety. These stops also threaten constitutional protections that guard people from unreasonable searches and seizures.
2. Non-safety traffic stops disproportionately harm communities of color. In multiple studies, Black and Hispanic drivers were more likely to experience pretextual stops than white drivers. Black and Hispanic drivers were also more likely to be searched during stops, even though these searches were less likely to yield criminal evidence than searches of white drivers. Additionally, in many cases, drivers of color experience higher rates of use of force during stops.
3. New Jersey’s overly broad traffic code forces police officers to use limited time and resources on infractions that are statistically insignificant to public safety. Drivers, police officers, and communities become less safe when resources are diverted away from addressing driving behaviors that endanger lives.

To make New Jersey safer and more just, the New Jersey Legislature and local city councils should prioritize passing laws that will prioritize road safety by reducing non-safety traffic stops. This report includes examples of cities and states that have already reformed their traffic codes with great success, cites public opinion polling that shows New Jerseyans widely support such reforms, and makes recommendations for potential policies in New Jersey.

In multiple studies of New Jersey traffic stops, researchers found that people of color were disproportionately stopped and searched. Simultaneously, searches of drivers of color were less likely to return evidence of a crime.

Consider one 2023 report commissioned by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. The report found that during the day – when officers can more easily see the race of drivers – Black drivers were 9.3% more likely to be stopped than at night. Hispanic drivers, meanwhile, were 16.1% more likely to be stopped.

The report also revealed that Black drivers were 89.9% more likely to be searched than white drivers. But compared to white drivers, Black drivers were 9.7% less likely to be found with contraband during that search. Hispanic drivers were 46.4% more likely to be searched and 26.6% less likely to be found with evidence.

Another analysis from the ACLU and the ACLU of New Jersey, in collaboration with master’s students at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, also found racial disparities in traffic stop enforcement. Researchers analyzed more than six million traffic stops conducted by the New Jersey State Police from January 2009 to May 2021.

The analysis found that Black people accounted for 18.8% of all drivers pulled over, despite comprising 8.2% of New Jersey drivers. Additionally, Black drivers accounted for 36.5% of all searches.

Researchers also analyzed common non-safety violations and found further evidence of racial disparities. Consider the data for the statute related to windshields, including windshield obstruction and window tinting.

In this category, Black drivers accounted for 28.1% of stops.

Black drivers accounted for 49.3% of those searched for windshield violations.

For windshield violations, Black drivers also comprised a lower share of searches yielding contraband – known as the hit-to-search ratio – than white drivers: 0.26 versus 0.29.

This data demonstrates what communities of color have voiced for years: Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately stopped and searched on the roads.

In sum, Black and Hispanic people often fear that they will be confronted by police and arrested simply for driving their vehicles. When people of color face consistent targeting and arrests, it takes an enormous toll on families and community members. It also makes the public less safe.

Excessive non-safety traffic stops make everyone – and particularly communities of color – less safe.

Traffic stops are the most common reason people interact with the police. As a result, these stops shape a community’s relationship with law enforcement.

Non-safety traffic stops – and by proxy, pretextual stops – are a significant source of over-policing in Black and brown communities and function as a common entry point into the criminal legal system. Unfortunately, during pretextual stops, people are automatically treated as though they have committed a crime, causing confusion and distress. If people are consistently pulled over and scrutinized for minor violations – even when driving safely – community trust in police officers declines.

Additionally, drivers who are pulled over, especially people of color, may experience inappropriate and forceful behavior, further reducing trust. The Department of Justice (DOJ)’s 2024 report on the Trenton Police Department includes multiple examples of such behavior during traffic stops.

Research also shows that given the same motivating reason behind a traffic stop, Black drivers are 30% more likely to experience force than white drivers. In New Jersey from 2013-2025, Black people were 7.4 times more likely to be killed by the police than white people, according to Mapping Police Violence.

As a result, non-safety traffic stops erode community trust, especially among communities of color. In the 2024 DOJ report, Trentonians reported they were less likely to call and report crime because of interactions with verbally and physically abusive officers during what should have been routine traffic stops.

Importantly, non-safety traffic stops also risk unnecessary confrontation. Reducing these overly common interactions that provoke anxiety and fear will be beneficial for everyone.

As previously noted, data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that non-safety traffic violations rarely cause deaths on the road. Certain violations are major contributing factors to fatal crashes in New Jersey, including unsafe behaviors like speeding, alcohol consumption, driver inattention, and failure to obey traffic signals and stop signs. From 2010-2023 in New Jersey, 22.8% of fatal crashes involved speeding, and 23.3% involved a distracted driver.

Additionally, studies across the country repeatedly found that police arrest drivers for contraband in less than 1% of traffic stops. Our analysis found that from January 2009 - May 2021, the New Jersey State Police found contraband in only 0.76% of traffic stops.

In sum, when officers are encouraged to focus on non-safety violations, they miss the biggest threats to safety.

Some cities and states across the nation have reduced non-safety traffic stops. For example, when Fayetteville, NC, decreased non-safety stops and prioritized stops for dangerous driving, public safety improved. One study estimated that this reform – in combination with other reforms – led to 765 fewer crashes and 19 fewer fatalities annually. Fayetteville’s reform also decreased assaults on officers.

Meanwhile, after Philadelphia implemented non-safety traffic stop reform, there was a 35.6% increase in traffic stops for running a red light or stop sign. Additionally, compared to the year before the reform, officers recovered more guns from fewer traffic stops.

Similarly, in Los Angeles, in the year after traffic stop reform, the Los Angeles Department Police Chief Dominic Choi reported, “We had one of the highest years in number of guns that were recovered and arrested.”

When Newington, CT, implemented traffic stop reform that prioritized identifying intoxicated drivers, they achieved a 250% increase in DUI arrests. Racial disparities also declined.

Policies to reduce non-safety traffic stops have broad support in New Jersey.

A February 2025 poll from YouGov and ACLU National found that an overwhelming majority (81%) of New Jerseyans – including vast majorities of liberals, moderates, and conservatives – want law enforcement to prioritize traffic stops for offenses like drunk driving or speeding, even if it means small infractions, like an expired registration or broken taillight, get missed.

Most New Jersey voters agree that this reform would free up police time to focus on solving serious crimes – while improving road safety, increasing trust in the police, and protecting democratic principles.

New Jersey should focus its resources on preventing accidents and saving lives, not conducting non-safety traffic stops that drive racial disparities in policing. As such, legislators should consider policies that reduce non-safety stops – and allow police officers to address driving behaviors that endanger lives.

The ACLU of New Jersey recommends that legislators amend the traffic code to clarify that law enforcement can stop a vehicle for certain non-safety traffic violations only if the violation presents an immediate threat to road safety, meaning that the violation is considered so severe that at least one person’s physical safety is at imminent risk of harm or the vehicle is at imminent risk of collision. Legislators should also specify concrete situations in which that threshold is and is not met. For example, legislators should amend the statute on windshields to clarify that an officer could no longer pull someone over for an air freshener, or another object of similar size and placement. But an officer could still stop someone if an obstructed windshield prevented a driver from safely operating their vehicle. Other violations to address include light violations, window tinting, and windshield issues like cracks.

For administrative violations – such as expired inspection and expired registration – legislators should implement a 90-day grace period during which law enforcement cannot stop drivers.

Legislators should also consider repealing certain non-safety traffic violations, including defective horn, noisy muffler, and missing a front license plate, given that a license plate is fixed on the rear of the vehicle. For failure to signal, the ACLU-NJ recommends that legislators clarify when a lack of signaling does not amount to a violation.

Non-safety traffic stop reform is widespread: people across the country understand that we are safer, and enforcement is fairer when traffic stop enforcement focuses on dangerous driving. Reducing non-safety traffic stops is a proven, simple, and popular way to improve public safety and racial justice.

It’s time for New Jersey to get into gear.

Data & Methodology