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It’s a goddamn banana car. This guy’s banana car is apparently legal, well constructed, and registered properly, but yes, the presence of a hand made banana car is reasonable suspicion that the car may not be up to snuff, road legal, or safe to operate around others.

by kube-system1 hours ago|

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That's a common misconception about what "reasonable suspicion" means.

"Reasonable suspicion of a crime" is an objective legal standard that doesn't mean the same thing as "they look suspicious" or the situation itself is "suspicious" -- it means that the officer thinks that a specific articulable crime has, is, or is about to occur. They don't have to be 100% sure, and they don't even have to be correct about what the law even is, but they do have to believe a law was broken.

Being unusual by itself does not legally qualify for reasonable suspicion of a crime or infraction, because being unusual isn't a crime.

Now, the officer could be interested in the car because it is a banana, and want to stop it to take a picture of it, but they have to have suspicion of some specific violation first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whren_v._United_States

For example:

1. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > "it doesn't look like it has turn signals" > [pulls them over] > "hey do you have turn signals", "yes", "ok my bad have a nice day" = legal, because not having turn signals is an equipment violation.

2. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > [pulls them over] > "hey is this thing legal?" = illegal, because looking weird is not a crime

by roughly16 minutes ago|

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Interesting, I see the distinction. That said, I’m genuinely curious here (and, I’m not defending police overreach - you can browse my comments if you’re worried I’ve got any love for authoritarians) - let’s take as a given that we’ve got a societal interest in automobiles meeting safety standards, and let’s take as a given that we’ve nominated the police as the body designated to ensure that vehicles being operated on the road meet these safety standards (or at least, we’ve designated them as the on-the-ground eyes for seeking out vehicles that don’t). Let’s also assume that some of those safety standards are not immediately visible from the outside - eg, it’s difficult to tell at a glance if the frame of the banana car is a well-constructed piece of welded steel or a shopping cart.

A cop sees what is clearly a hand-made banana car driving past them in the other direction on the road. What do you feel like are the appropriate actions for that cop to take in those circumstances, with just the facts available to them at hand?

I’m not arguing that the cops we have do not regularly and aggressively abuse their power and violate the social contract, but I’m struggling to see how we would want a cop to behave in an ideal world in this circumstance that isn’t “pull over the banana car and make sure it’s safe.” From the sound of it, they’re not ticketing the banana car, they obviously haven’t impounded it, and knock wood, they haven’t shot the driver yet, but what would your expectation be for them in that situation?

by wyclif4 hours ago|

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IANAL, and would like to believe that what you say is true, but I think in most jurisdictions "reasonable suspicion" that the vehicle was not street legal would float as justification for a stop.

by kube-system2 hours ago|

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There is no "street legal" statute, so it would have to be for something specific like an improperly displayed license plate, that one example in the article alludes to.

But other examples in the article like "Often officers simply wanted photographs." would not be a legal reason.

Now, in practice, this is a very easy standard to meet, because even if an officer wants to pull someone over arbitrarily, they can simply follow someone until they make a very minor infraction like crossing a line improperly, exceeding the speed limit by 1mph, rolling a stop, or failing to signal... but they still have to do it.