How exciting to have possibly started a Great Debate!
At least you can refuse to open your door. Not quite the same as being able to refuse to pull your car over.
interesting do you have a cite for the case?
I don’t understand. You want to question the legality of something that removes unsafe drivers from the road? In 1990, 22% of motor vehicle crash victims–1.2 million–were injured in crashes involving alcohol. Over 22,000 of these victims were killed.
Five minutes sounds excessive and I can understand a slight annoyance about that. If I’m driving around Sydney on a weekend night, I see random breath testing more often than not. When I’m stopped by one of these, the delay is around a minute. Quick breath into a tube and you’re on your way.
Your link doesn’t mention checkpoints. Are there any statistics showing that DUI checkpoints are effective at reducing drunk driving accidents?
Is it unreasonable to assume that since a large proportion of motor vehicle crash deaths are related to alcohol, that removing drunk drivers from the road will prevent accidents? I’m not sure whether they prevent enough for it to be statistically significant. For mine, if a minute of my time each weekend prevents one death in a year, it’s worth it. If the statistics were not significant, one could argue that police are wasting their time and should pursue other avenues for the prevention of these deaths. It’s the idea that one would try to find legal reasons to prevent checkpoints (we call it RBT here, for random breath testing) that I’m struggling to get my head around.
For checkpoints to significantly reduce deaths, we’d have to know that significantly more drunk drivers are taken off the road with checkpoints than without. We’d also have to know that the ones that are taken off the road are the ones who cause accidents - it’s possible, for example, that the drunk drivers who are clever enough to learn about checkpoints in advance and avoid them are the ones who are responsible for the most accidents.
Feel free to donate your own time, but please don’t be so generous with mine or anyone else’s.
I can certainly understand the opposition to DUI checkpoints. Aside from the inconvenience and theoretical arguments against them, it’s reasonable not to want to have to prove oneself innocent on a regular basis. Checkpoints are there to require people who aren’t exhibiting any signs of impaired driving to prove that they aren’t impaired, which goes against a long tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”.
Sobriety checkpoints are illegal in Washington, so I’ve never had to deal with them, but I’d oppose any attempt to start using them.
It’s not a court ruling (since municipal courts do not use precedents in the strict sence of the work), but rather state law. California has strict laws against speed traps and the mechanism the cameras use violate those speed trap laws. In a state where speed traps are legal e.g. Washington, these cameras would probably be legal.
For a traffic violation true, and if I were weaving all over the road, there’s the probable cause for a breathalyzer. But for a search I do have a right to a search warrant detailing what they are looking for or an explanation of the probably cause leading to the search. Being in the fifth car in line is not probable cause for a search of my lungs.
I believe that the fact is the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy under the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to cars, while it does apply to your house or your person. I don’t recall the reasoning, but I would imagine it has something to do with the pulbic dangers involved with intoxicated drivers, especially on days when people tend to drink a lot (St. Patrick’s Day, etc.). So they can point a thingy that can detect alcohol fumes inside your car and then pull you over if it reads positive. But they can’t point something at your home that shows if you are using excessive lights to grow marijuana plants. Also, they can’t do a “checkpoint” on the sidewalk to see if anyone who otherwise is lawabiding has anything on them.
At least, this is how I understand it. Congress could pass a law making it illegal to treat cars differently, or a state could do that, but I doubt it would ever happen. So driving is a privilege, granted at the state’s conditions, but walking, in theory, is a “right.” Your car is a public place, open to various forms of scructiny. Still, I think many states have laws which require probable cause for a car stop/search. But the thingy that can detect from a distance fumes inside your car, has been ruled constitutional by the SCOTUS, I believe. On the same grounds, checkpoints would probably pass through the (present) SCOTUS as constitutional.
I’m not trying to be a smartarse here, nor judemental oe anything like that, but are there many other non-Americans reading this thread and thinking “woah!”? My country is so very culturally similar to the good ol’ US of A on many, many fronts, but sometimes there are things that seem so alien, they could be from Mars (and I’m sure that goes both ways).
To me it just seems natural and normal that if you are driving a car, you can be pulled over and breathalysed. If you have sudden and unexplained enormous electricity bills, the power company is legally obliged to inform the police, in case you have a hydroponic cannabis set-up. That law is fairly new, but nobody complained a great deal when it came in.
Are you implying some connection between those laws? There’s quite a difference between investigating someone who’s acting suspiciously (swerving on the road or suddenly using tons of electricity) and investigating someone who’s doing nothing unusual (driving a car).
No connection beyond that both situations were previously mentioned in the thread, and both illustrate well the difference in national attitudes.
(bolding mine)
You’re confusing the USA’s national attitudes with the USA Doper’s attitudes. The two are quite different. 
I suspect the majority of US dopers oppose checkpoints for DUI. I’m rather certain the majority of US citizens favor such checkpoints.
That’s not to say that U.S. dopers are likely DUI practitioners. Most of us are simply weird and out of step with the national attitude.
What?!? Maybe this isn’t what I’m thinking it is, and whether the guy’s guilty of something or not has no bearing on this, but are you saying that if one sees a roadblock, it’s illegal to turn around?
Here are some stats of the amount of people taken off the roads in the ACT.
This one shows that the introduction of RBT caused a significant reduction in fatal crashes in some areas.
I see RBT as a preventative measure. It is not possible to know whether someone taken off the road would have gone on and caused an accident. It is well known that being under the influence of alcohol significantly reduces your ability to drive.
Being able to avoid them is an implementation problem, not something inherent in the idea.
When you’re using roads, you’re using them conditionally. If the “innocent until proven guilty” principle were applied to roads, you would not have to get a drivers license or register your car. You have to prove that you are capable of driving. You have to prove that your car is road worthy (the extent of this probably varies from place to place). It is not unreasonable to expect to have to prove your sobriety once in a while.
There is an alternative - don’t drive. I don’t have a driver’s license, and I certainly have the freedom to travel. Yes, my options are more restricted than someone that does have a driver’s license, but I can still get where I need to both for pleasure and for work. Taxis and public transit are useful things. Your options are more restricted than someone who has a pilot’s license (I’m guessing you don’t - if you do, pretend you’re one of the majority that don’t ). I haven’t heard of anyone insisting that being able to pilot an aircraft is a right.
As an aside, my sister and brother-in-law don’t have driver’s licenses, and a good friend has a license but not a car (simply because he has no need of one), so I may be unusual, but I’m certainly not unique!
I think that commercial is national. I see it here.
I spent the day in traffic court a few weeks ago in sunny southern California. I assure you that the judge was not dismissing any tickets that came as a result of a traffic camera. You information seems suspect.
Thank you, that’s what I was looking for. Looks like it was pretty significant: “It was found the initiative reduced fatal crashes (in high alcohol times of the week) in Melbourne during 1990 by around 19-24% relative to what was expected.”
BTW, any idea what they mean by “Bus-based RBT stations using highly visible ‘Booze Buses’ largely replaced car-based stations”?
Unless checkpoints are going to be set up at every street corner, or all your city’s bars and Christmas parties are on an island with only one bridge connecting it to the mainland, the checkpoints are inherently avoidable.
That’s a good point, but the police don’t stop traffic to measure emissions at random or administer driving tests. You periodically get your car inspected and your vision tested because they both tend to fail over time, but most people will never drive drunk.
I still think this is a step too far, and sets up a slippery slope to performing other searches at random. (“Your BAC looks fine, but I think I smell some drugs, bombs, or illegal immigrants in your trunk. We could get lawyers and judges involved, but it’d get you on your way much sooner if you just stepped out of the car and opened the trunk and glove box for me, OK?”)
Oh, please. Lots of people survive without driving; try surviving without air. Driving is not a right; one can take a bus, taxi, carpool, bike, or hoof it. Not too many options for breathing. Poor analogy.
Every privilege has responsibilities that go with it. Obeying the laws governing driving on the thoroughfares is the primary responsibility. Driving impaired is not only against the law, but it also jeopardizes others on the road. Personally I would rather be inconvenienced for several minutes at a DUI checkpoint than run the risk of a drunk driver taking me off the planet permanently. If just one driver out of 100 at that checkpoint is removed from the road because he is too impaired to drive, that might be one or more lives saved that day. The inconvenience is worth it to me.
I see a key difference between DUI checkpoints and drug checkpoints. Likewise I see a large difference between the police being able to test you for intoxication in your car and being able to decide to knock on your door and test you for drugs.
The difference is if you are intoxicated or otherwise impaired while operating a vehicle you are posing a significant safety hazard to your fellow citizens whereas, if you are smuggling drugs in your car or using illegal drugs at home you are not posing the same safety hazard. You would still be participating in an illegal activity of course, however I believe it is the safety issue which allows the police to perform the inspection.