02/11/2025
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LEGISLATIVE SPOTLIGHT
HB 1512: Deterioration of traffic safety
Washington continues to grapple record high fatal traffic collisions and a nationwide low number of police to enforce traffic laws. HB 1512 aims to discourage traffic enforcement by over complicating traffic stops and burying police in paperwork. This is all accomplished under the guise that lawmakers know how to conduct police work better than police do, reinforcing the notion that the lawmakers sponsoring this bill don’t trust their local police.
The bill sponsor asserts that because we have so few police (a problem manufactured at the state level because of bad laws), the state will solve the problem it artificially created by micromanaging police (which will continue to cause shortages), perpetuating a cycle of distrust.
The bill also creates an odd gray area, where equipment violations are illegal but not enforceable. Laws without enforcement are optional.
The bill covers a lot, so I’ll break it down by section, but the base summary is:
• A grant program is created to help low income persons fix equipment issues
• Police can no longer stop cars for equipment violations, non moving violations, driving on a suspended license (under certain conditions), or expired tabs (with an ironic caveat)
• Police must write full reports on every traffic stop regardless of outcome
Grant program: this section is great and long overdue. Helping low income drivers get their cars roadworthy improves traffic safety. However, most drivers don’t do a full two person safety inspection when they get into their car every single day, so the bill doesn’t explain how low income drivers will know they have equipment violations to get help with if they aren’t being stopped and notified there is a problem in the first place.
Preventing police from conducting non-moving violation stops: in my experience, most equipment violation stops are brief and end with a warning. Still, there are no shortage of equipment violation stops that end up discovering new criminal law violations such as DUI, drug dealing, unlawful possession of guns, ID theft, stolen car recovery, active warrants, and more.
The ironic exception for expired tabs: the bill sponsors don’t want police to stop people with expired tabs… unless they lose out on too much revenue. If the tabs are more than 12 months expired, this bill gives the green light to stop cars for expired tabs again.
Requiring law enforcement to write full reports on every traffic stop (moving and non-moving): if you read between the lines of this bill, the goal isn’t to “improve traffic safety”. The goal is to deter police from conducting traffic enforcement by making it so cumbersome and inefficient that police stop enforcing traffic laws at all. This will prove to be detrimental in a state that desperately needs more traffic enforcement on our deadly roads, not less.
The bottom line: this bill is lazy. If there are laws the legislature doesn’t want police to enforce, go line by line through title 46 and strike them out individually and make driving a car with one working green LED headlight, no mufflers, no bumpers, and expired tabs legal to drive.
Recent history has illustrated that when lawmakers assert they know how to do police work better than police while failing to inquire with their local police about predictable outcomes, it ends poorly for everyone.
You can send a comment to your representative in support of or against HB 1512 at this link: https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1512
