Also known as: traffics · trafficked · trafficking · traffic law · traffic violation · road traffic
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
2 senses
Vehicular movement along roads or highways.
Commercial exchange or dealing in goods, especially across state lines or in controlled substances.
Each sense below has its own examples, sources, and questions.
Vehicular movement along roads or highways.
Theo Thomas is pulled over for speeding on the highway. While the officer writes the ticket, a second officer walks a trained dog around the car exterior. The dog alerts, leading to a search that uncovers contraband without extending the stop duration.
Tanner Thompson rides as a passenger in a vehicle stopped for a broken taillight. The officer orders Tanner out of the car for safety reasons even though no suspicion attaches to him personally. The order keeps the encounter brief and focused on the original violation.
Commercial exchange or dealing in goods, especially across state lines or in controlled substances.
Theodore Tucker grows marijuana plants in his backyard for personal medical use under state law. Federal agents arrive and seize the plants during an investigation into broader distribution networks. The court upholds the seizure because the activity forms part of an aggregated economic scheme affecting national markets.
Timothy Tang carries a firearm near a school. Prosecutors charge him under a federal statute. The court examines whether the prohibition regulates channels or instrumentalities of commerce or substantially affects interstate traffic in guns.
Tristan Thompson drives with a cracked windshield. An officer stops the car for the equipment violation while suspecting unrelated criminal activity. The stop remains valid because probable cause exists for the observed traffic infraction regardless of the officer's additional motives.
Talia Torres lives with her grandson in a single-family home under a city ordinance restricting occupancy to nuclear family members. The ordinance aims to limit traffic and parking congestion but the court reviews whether the restriction arbitrarily intrudes on family living arrangements.
No. A dog sniff performed on the exterior of a vehicle during a lawful traffic stop that is not extended beyond the time required to address the original violation does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Yes. Officers may order passengers out of a lawfully stopped vehicle for officer safety even without any particularized suspicion that the passengers pose a danger.
No. A traffic stop remains reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when officers have probable cause to believe a traffic violation occurred, regardless of any subjective desire to investigate other crimes.
…Justice Marshall, first defined the nature of that power in Gibbons v. Ogden , 9 Wheat. 1 (1824): “Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for…