From 20 million traffic stops, 2.4 percent lead to a search. Of those, just 33 percent led to contraband (0.8 percent of stops), and just 12 percent of the searches led to a contraband-arrest combination (0.29 percent of stops). That is, 99.7 percent of traffic stops fail to generate a drug or contraband arrest. The “sheer numbers game” the California trooper describes is a bad gamble.
