DRUNKEN DRIVERS
Checkpoints can help keep them off the road
David Sibley
Published: December 31, 1995
Next time you’re out on the road this holiday season, look over at the car in the next lane. Has that driver had a little too much holiday cheer at the office party? At a time of year that promotes celebrating, it would be comforting to know that the person driving next to you at highway speeds is in complete control of himself and his car. Last year, drunken drivers were responsible for 1,170 deaths and 34,060 injuries on Texas roadways. Those numbers are expected to rise with the increase in speed limits on the state’s highways. It’s more important than ever to detect and deter drunken drivers, and sobriety checkpoints are the best tool to keep people sober behind the wheel. At a sobriety checkpoint, a law enforcement officer, following strict guidelines, uses a temporary roadblock to briefly stop a vehicle to determine if the driver is drunk.
Law enforcement officers in Texas once were allowed to operate sobriety checkpoints. Police departments in Houston and other cities that conducted checkpoints in the early 1990s say their use led to a decrease in drunken driving arrests. The goal of checkpoints is not necessarily to arrest people. Instead, it is hoped that the fear of being caught at a checkpoint will act as a deterrent and keep some people from drinking and driving at all. However, even though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of sobriety checkpoints in 1990, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals outlawed them in June 1994 because no statewide procedure existed for setting up the roadblocks.
During the 74th Texas Legislature, I introduced a bill that would have established that statewide procedure and resurrected the option for law enforcement officials to use sobriety checkpoints.
My bill unanimously passed the Senate but died in a House committee. Now Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock has instructed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee to study the use of sobriety checkpoints as part of its review of state driving-while-intoxicated laws. I plan to reintroduce my bill when the Legislature convenes in January 1997.
When people think of checkpoints, they picture long lines of cars backed up for miles while police conduct sobriety tests. This is not how sobriety checkpoints would work under my bill.
Instead, law enforcement officers would stop motor vehicles on a predictable and non arbitrary not random basis. No stop could be longer than two minutes, unless the officer decided there was reason to give the driver a field sobriety test.
No one would wait in line at a checkpoint for longer than 10 minutes. The operation of a checkpoint would be publicized ahead of time. But the specific date, time and location would not be disclosed
At Houston Police Department roadblocks, vehicles took an average of three minutes to pass through a checkpoint. Contact time with each driver was about 30 seconds _ unless further field sobriety tests were conducted.
Sure, checkpoints would cause some minor delays. But few people complain about going through a metal detector at the airport. The extra time and minor inconvenience are a small price to pay to make sure there isn’t a bomb or an armed passenger on the plane. Likewise, sobriety checkpoints would prevent `bombs” on our roadways
The time appears right for Texas to follow the lead of 38 states and the District of Columbia, which already conduct sobriety checkpoints. In a May referendum, 74 percent of Arlington voters said they favor authorizing sobriety checkpoints.
Studies in states where checkpoints are legal show they have been a tremendous success in reducing alcohol-related crashes. For example, alcohol-related deaths on roadways in New Mexico dropped 25 percent between December 1993 and May 1995 through the use of sobriety checkpoints and public information campaigns.
But don’t just take my word or the word of Mothers Against Drunk Driving or law enforcement officers that sobriety checkpoints are needed. Instead, listen to victims such as 10-year-old Mitchie Mitchell of Austin. Lawmakers listened intently to Mitchie when he testified from a wheelchair at a committee hearing in October. Mitchie has had surgery 18 times since 1989. It was then that his father, who had been drinking and had several prior drunken driving convictions, lost control of his car near Florence. Mitchie was a passenger in the car. `I wish and pray there was a checkpoint . . . (on) Sept. 17, 1989,” Mitchie’s mother, Joyce Hunt, told the committee. Let’s hope the Texas Legislature remembers the words of Mitchie and his mother as it debates sobriety checkpoints again in 1997. David Sibley is a Republican state senator from Waco.
Copyright 1995, 1996 The Dallas Morning News Company