If you spent a bunch of money to violate the rights of motorists by setting up and manning DUI checkpoints what would you define as success? According to the agents of the state in Salt Lake City checking 2,000 cars and finding 0 drunks constitutes success:
UHP Sgt. Ted Tingey said in two spots, officers found no drunk drivers out of approximately 1,000 vehicles that came through each checkpoint.
“It’s a great opportunity to see that people maybe finally are getting the message to either have a designated driver, take a taxi ride home, or call a sober friend to come pick them up,” he said.
Or it could be that the drunks know where your checkpoints are and take an alternate route. But that’s OK because violating 2,000 peoples’ rights is fine so long as one drunk is caught… even if they haven’t caught a drunk yet… so they tell me.
Checkpoints are another way for the state to accuse you of a crime they have no evidence of. They turn everybody entering these checkpoints into de facto criminals where innocence must be proven as opposed to guilt. It’s another example of the state shitting all over due process.
I dislike drunk drivers because of the danger that they represent, however, I have also had to endure several DUI checkpoints that always have at their very best, just modest “success” in my area.
How about this? When we do catch a drunk driver due to erratic behavior, THROW THE BOOK AT THEM! Perhaps we should take away their driver’s license on their first or second offense. Any further incidents must be prison time if you want the road carnage to end.
We should end these liberty crushing operations on the premise of the Fourth Amendment. Since I’m not a criminal, I do not want to be treated like one. If I present probable cause for a traffic stop, then yes, it would be time for a sobriety test, but not before.
So, I disagree with many of the MADD approaches and instead favor liberty, but also responsibility, and it needed, punishment.
I’m a little Ben Franklin in my position, I’ll never be willing to surrender any liberty in exchange for “security.” In fact this story demonstrates the fact that these so-called “security enhancements” aren’t enhancements at all because they accomplish nothing.
Playing Devi’s advocate you can be fairly sure that drunk driving wouldn’t be that big of an issue in a society where roads were privatized. If you drove drunk on a privately held road the road owners would prohibit you from ever using their roads again. Hell if the road owner’s didn’t do that they probably couldn’t get their roads insured.
Sadly with the public road system ownership is ill-defined and thus not such policies can be set into place. Every law against drunk driving needs to be passed and argued in court when the law is inevitably challenged (which all laws should be). Thus we have this strange wishy washy series of laws put into place supposedly to stop drunk driving but in actuality do nothing of importance and do everything possible to turn everybody into a criminal without any evidence affirming such accusations. Guilty until proven innocent and all that jazz.