It's this plus a distinct lack of enforcement.

I've driven in 3 major cities over the last decade (LA, SF, Seattle) and in all of them the local police departments have been ignoring a lot of traffic infractions that they would have pulled people over for before. The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests.

> The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests.

No surprise there, it's not the first time police unions have decided to just not enforce any laws at all to get politicians to do what they want.

As much as I would want, I wouldn't place all the blame on the police. Just here in Virginia, we are struggling with:

https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits...

> In March 2021, a new Virginia law went into effect that prohibits law enforcement officers from making traffic stops for certain minor offenses.

This law prohibits police from stopping you if you are e.g. missing a taillight or a brake light, which for me feels insane.

There are similar things in DC/MD as far as I can recall

They had to stop cops from pulling people over for minor infractions because cops couldn’t stop themselves from killing people at traffic stops over things like broken tail lights.

The same thing happened in Minneapolis, along with this:

‘The City Attorney’s Office will stop prosecuting tickets for driving after suspension when the only basis for the suspension was a failure to pay fines or fees and there was no accident or other egregious driving behavior that would impact public safety.’”

As someone who only drives in Minneapolis every few months the change that happened around 2020 was ridiculous. I regularly saw cars doing well over 100 in the city when I had never seen that before.

Disagree. BLM caused the politicians to throw the police under the bus before it was determined if they were actually in the wrong or not. Of course the police are going to be more interested in avoiding possible incidents and less interested in going after trouble.

BLM got what it "wanted"--there's a definite drop in police shootings where they were active. But it was a cat's paw result: The increase in criminal black deaths was far greater than the decrease in police black deaths.

Yeah Seattle I see so many people driving without plates now. Lack of enforcement is a real issue. They are simply not enough police as they all quit after the Riots

> Smartphone use. App use while driving, wearing airpods and the like, more vehicles with monitors, more integration between phone apps and car entertainment systems to fiddle around with?

These are all likely factors which is why I can't just claim everyone forgot how to drive during COVID shutdowns. At the same time the shocking incompetence I've seen (anecdata) the past year or two haven't seemed to involve people fiddling with distractions but just being hyper aggressive shitheads.