California’s Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) has declared 2010 (drum roll please) “The Year of the Checkpoint.”
It’s great that California wants to get drunk drivers off the roads. But, a hyped-up, waste-of-money checkpoints push isn’t the way to do it. Just look at the results of California’s 2008 roadblock campaign: over a million vehicles went through 1,469 checkpoints. Police arrested just one-third of 1 percent of those motorists for drunk driving.
And 2009 doesn’t look much better. Checkpoints in Barstow, Costa Mesa, Fairfield, Fort Bragg, Orange County, Redding, Ripon, San Francisco, San Rafael, and Ukiah caught zero drunk drivers. Checkpoints in Coachella, Clovis, Folsom, Fresno, Martinez, Norco, Palm Springs, Petaluma, Porterville, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Maria made just 1 arrest each, and stopped thousands upon thousands of innocent drivers in the process.
If you’re thinking 1 arrest is better than nothing, think about this: saturation patrols in Alameda County, Fontana, North County, San Bernardino, and Visalia caught anywhere from 6 to 47 drunk drivers each.
Checkpoints are just PR stunts – a way to look like you’re cracking down, when really you’re just standing around. But, that won’t stop the OTS from going into spin mode:
Since OTS and law enforcement began placing increased emphasis and funding toward sobriety checkpoints in 2006, alcohol-related deaths have declined in California. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System, DUI deaths declined in California by 9.1 percent between 2007 and 2008, marking a total decrease of nearly 21 percent from the most recent high point in 2005.
As we’ve pointed out, anyone calling the drop in fatalities in 2008 more than a fluke is fooling themselves. Or maybe they’re just fooling you.
