By Eric Peters on 1.4.05 @ 12:06AM
Did Holiday roadblocks make us safer?
We're told that random sobriety checkpoints used to identify and
catch "drunk drivers" make the roads safer -- but there's little,
if any, hard data to support this claim.
What we do have is an attempt to correlate the number
of people arrested for driving with at least some alcohol in their
bloodstream (no matter how little) with a reduction in
alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities.
That's quite a different thing.
In fact, the practice of herding drivers like cattle through
these "checkpoints" hasn't put much of a dent in the total number
of drunk driving deaths that occur annually in the U.S.
Depending on whose numbers you believe, roughly half of the
48,000 or so motor vehicle fatalities reported to the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) each year are listed
as "alcohol-related" -- that is, attributed in some way to the
consumption of alcohol and the involvement of a motor vehicle.
But these figures are themselves deceptive because, for one
thing, "alcohol-related" means fatalities that don't necessarily
involve a drunk driver are lumped in with those that do. For
example, the death of a drunk pedestrian who wanders into a busy
street and gets run over is listed as "alcohol-related" fatality --
even though the driver of the car was completely sober.
Similarly, if a car runs off the road and it is later determined
that a passenger had some alcohol in his system, the death of that
passenger is likewise reported as "alcohol-related" --
even though the passenger's consumption of alcohol had absolutely
nothing to do with the accident itself. In this way, the actual
number of "drunk driving" deaths can be distorted -- and is
reported -- as being a much higher percentage of the total than is
in fact the case.
The more relevant fact as regards the usefulness of sobriety
checkpoints, however, is that while there is some slight
year-to-year fluctuation in motor vehicle fatalities attributed to
drunk driving, there has been no major downward trend that
coincides with the increased use of roadside sobriety checkpoints
-- which have become commonplace around the country, especially
during the holiday season.
But if the checkpoints are effective at catching dangerous
drunks, then there should be an obvious statistical downtick in
drunk driving deaths that coincides with the expanded use of these
checkpoints.
Problem is, there isn't.
This suggests that while sobriety checkpoints have been very
effective at criminalizing social drinkers -- that is, otherwise
law-abiding and responsible people with slight trace amounts of
alcohol in their system who would otherwise have gone unnoticed and
probably made it home without incident -- they aren't doing so well
at nabbing the truly dangerous heavy drinkers who are responsible
for the majority of the drunk driving deaths and accidents.
It's a fact, for example, that the majority of drunk driving
deaths involve a person with a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of .10
percent or higher, a point reached after a bout of pretty heavy
drinking -- not the glass or two of wine over dinner that puts a
person in peril of a DUI citation as a result of running afoul of
ever-lower maximum allowable BAC levels.
Most states now have BAC thresholds for "drunk driving" set at
the .08 BAC level, significantly below the .10 BAC level (and
higher) that used to obtain -- and at which point it's been shown a
person is most likely to actually be involved in (or the cause of)
a motor vehicle accident.
Having had a drink or two is not the same thing as being "drunk"
-- but advocates of ever-lower BAC thresholds and the aggressive
use of sobriety checkpoints do not seem to appreciate the
distinction. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), to cite the most
notorious example, continues to push for BAC thresholds to be
lowered to .06, even .04 -- a level so low that a person could be
legally considered "drunk" after having consumed as little as a
single glass of beer or wine.
But "habitual offenders" with BAC levels of .10 and higher are
not only responsible for most of the drunk driving problem, they
tend to go out and drive drunk again and again and again. They are
not deterred by sobriety checkpoints -- and are often cagey enough
to avoid them entirely, because (for example) many hard-core
alcoholics drive drunk in the daytime -- and for the most
part sobriety checkpoints are set up in the evening
hours.
The best way to catch these habitual and hard-core drunk
drivers, according to experienced law-enforcement officers, is not
by the use of dragnet-style "checkpoints" -- but the old-fashioned
way: by patrolling the streets, looking for drivers displaying
evidence of serious impairment such as weaving, wandering across
the center line, or driving too slowly.
Instead, police resources have been concentrated on static
checkpoints -- leaving the roads open to the bad guys while
over-punishing people who aren't really the problem.
Like the airport practice of screening middle aged hausfraus at
the gate, this may be politically correct -- but it's demonstrably
ineffective at identifying and dealing with the real culprits.
topics:
Law
