By Seth Richardson
As if it wasn’t bad enough that out of 2,787 drivers whose liberty was infringed by a 4th of July DUI checkpoint, only 17 were “cited for DUI,” a new study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demonstrates that the actual risks of encountering a drunk driver are quite small as well.
A 2007 NHTSA study just released, conducted at 300 locations nationwide and involving nearly 11,000 drivers who volunteered to be tested, concluded that only 2.2 percent of drivers tested had blood-alcohol content above the legal limit of 0.08 percent, half the previous number in 1996 and just over a quarter of the number of 7.8 percent in 1973.
Fewer people are driving while intoxicated, and that’s a good thing, but another conclusion of the study is more alarming, but not for the obvious reasons. The study found that 16 percent of drivers tested on weekend nights tested positive for marijuana, cocaine, prescription sedatives and other drugs. This may sound alarming, but it’s really not, and we should ignore the fear-mongering proclamations of people like Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, who said in an ONDCP blog entry on July 13th, “The troubling data shows us, for the first time, the scope of drugged driving in America, and reinforces the need to reduce drug abuse. Drugged driving, like drunk driving… puts us all at risk and must be prevented.”
The problem with Czar Kerlikowske’s hysterical pontification is that it has no basis in scientific fact, as carefully pointed out by the very researchers who conducted the NHTSA study, which explicitly points out that “The reader is cautioned that drug presence does not necessarily imply impairment. For many drug types, drug presence can be detected long after any impairment that might affect driving has passed. For example, traces of marijuana can be detected in blood samples several weeks after chronic users stop ingestion. Also, whereas the impairment effects for various concentration levels of alcohol is well understood, little evidence is available to link concentrations of other drug types to driver performance.” And this: “The result of these factors is that, at the current time, specific drug concentration levels cannot be reliably equated with effects on driver performance.”
The study, available in PDF form from a link on the page link above, points out that whether or not drug use, illegal or legal, impairs driving ability is a complex and poorly understood scientific matter and that a good deal of research is required before any valid conclusions can be drawn. “The full significance of these findings for highway safety will only become clear when ongoing and additional research conducted by NHTSA and others is completed,” the report concludes.
The study also points out that NHTSA has been pursuing an educational program for police officers to train them to recognize the “symptoms of driver impairment by drugs other than alcohol.” More than 1000 instructors and 6000 officers in 46 states have received this training.
In the NHTSA “Highway Safety Desk Book,” a federal reference guide for local law enforcement, the federal government pays at least lip service to the idea that the emphasis should be on detecting impaired drivers and getting them off the road. “While substances affect different individuals in differing degrees, laws should emphasize the impairment of the driver—not the type, legal or illegal, or even the amount of the substance ingested.”
What’s important about this training program is that it’s nothing new. Police officers are routinely trained to recognize bad driving behavior indicative of intoxication, regardless of the source of the impairment, as justification for stopping someone. For many years a handbook has been available to law enforcement officers that predicts the probability of a driver being impaired based on an officer’s observation of bad driving. For example, driving without headlights at night or slow response to changing traffic signals indicates a “statistically valid” probability of .45 to .65 that the driver is impaired to a level consistent with a 0.08 percent BAC. As a former certified DUI enforcement officer, I used this handbook way back in the 1980s. Indeed, even a layman can keep a copy of this handbook in their car and use it to detect drunk drivers themselves, whom they can then follow and report to the police, as I have done many times since retiring from law enforcement.
There are more than 100 such cues and associated probabilities available for officers to observe in the actual driving behavior of a suspect that can provide plenty of probable cause for the officer to stop and investigate further, and a combination of these cues can in and of themselves, without any chemical test, provide not only probable cause to arrest, but proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the suspect’s guilt in court. In fact, some estimates are that prosecutors actually present chemical test results less than 50 percent of the time, and that DUI defense lawyers have little difficulty in getting such results thrown out because of technical or procedural difficulties with the test, which is a big part of why prosecutors don’t present them in court. The majority of people are convicted of DUI based only on the testimony of the officer about his observations of the defendant’s physical behavior and driving ability.
In other words, police officers are already well trained to detect intoxicated drivers, and all they need is be in a position to observe and apprehend them. DUI checkpoints are notoriously ineffective at doing either. Typically the success ratio for such checkpoints is one percent or less, and in order to conduct a checkpoint, officers have to be taken away from other general law enforcement duties and they are stuck at a single location, dependent on the amount of traffic passing by for even the minimal success they enjoy. DUI checkpoints are an enormous waste of police resources, taxpayer money and they are almost completely ineffective at actually getting drunks off the highway.
The NHTSA insists, “the sobriety checkpoint is a highly visible enforcement mechanism. … Its purpose is to maximize deterrence, by increasing the risk perception of motorists who drive while impaired by alcohol or drugs.” What this statement proves is that DUI checkpoints are more about fear mongering, exercise of police authority and potential deterrence than they are about apprehending actual impaired drivers.
To successfully apprehend drivers who are actually impaired, police officers should not waste their time standing around waiting for a drunk driver to miss the “DUI Checkpoint Ahead” signs and wander into a checkpoint, they should be out driving around, observing driving behavior and comparing it to the cues provided by the NHTSA to achieve reasonable suspicion to stop and probable cause to arrest. In addition to having officers on the street and able to respond to emergencies, by doing so, they do not violate the civil rights of the 97.8 percent of sober drivers, and they greatly enhance their chances of coming across one of the 2.2 percent of drivers who are actually dangerous to the public.
“We should never drink and drive, but I still like to know where checkpoints
will be in Orange County, San Diego, and LA. I may use calcheckpoint
(www.twitter.com/calcheckpoint) to find out where they are Save a life,
please retweet”
I wonder how here around Salem Oregon the DUII checkpoints are doing?
The only problem with your logic is that the Demonuts have taken over the house and are like the guests that don’t know when to leave and will party *making laws* all hours of the night without public opinion. *behind closed doors* and not even read half the laws they make. *Stimulus Package*
The democrats will just say. “But that one percent needs to go to jail or he’ll kill somebody no matter how small the amount” translation:
“I don’t care if we give up our freedoms and waste $$$ as long as we catch that 1% drunk driver and save that poor mother with 3 children’s lives even though I don’t know squat about her or her kids”
Democrat 2: Number 1 you are right on! In fact we should have sober police officers patrol the interior of bars & pubs to observe suspicious drunks to enforce they don’t get into a motor vechicle.
Overemotional mother:
Stupid Conservatives ruining America by allowing Drunk Drivers indeed What have we allowed our selfs to become. We are the murderer’s of our children. *goes on a long rant*
Foreign poster: Estt wwwweeeiiee eooooowie ooooooooo. *nobody understands his language*
SpamBot: U Suck
Newbie101: Shut up Spambot:
*insert flame war here*
*insert Sethr disabling blog commenting here*
Wolf lover:
I’m not sure how to take your “wake up and smell the coffee.” I took issue with nothing Seth wrote. I merely expressed shock that so many drivers were “under the influence” at any one time. Perhaps my naivete was what you were referring to? If so, you’re correct. I appreciated the rest of your posting, too.
For Jim: Wake up and smell the coffee, 1 in 50 is only 2% of drivers driving drunk. Slightly higher than the rate of drunk flying for airline pilots according to the FAA. Really pretty good considering that 1 in 7, or 15%, of Americans are alcoholics according to the AMA. I agree with Hutch: chronic drunks a better drivers than mobile phone users, because at least the drunks are frightened into cautiousness while mobile phone users are rather blase about it all.
For sethr: Excellent points and I deeply appreciate your respect for science, but two corrections on points of law. The max legal BAC was .15%. up until the mid-1980′s when, to your point, MADD, appealed to Regan’s war on drugs and, under threat of withdrawal of Federal highway funding, all states cut to .10% and again under Bush the elder, cut to .08%.
But do not overlook Colorado, the toughest laws in the country. You do a week in the slammer for .05%. 30 days for .08%. In Colorado, beer is 4.2% alcohol. Two pints of beer in an hour is 7 days in the slammer.
Lastly, no-one is obligated to be tested at at a DUI checkpoint. While you must stop, you can nonetheless whip out your knowledge of the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment and refuse to be tested under the clause forbidding “unreasonable search and seizure.” Law enforcement does not have the privilege of testing everyone, only those who are suspects.
To wit: This will guarantee that a cop will follow you well into the next county observing you for suspect behaviors as you described. But if you are sober, I recommend stopping at the check point and instructing the officer to “piss off”‘ and that he should go to his squad car and look up the US Constitution on his fancy mobile internet connection.
1 in 50 driving drunk, yet 40 of the remaining 49 driving with a cell glued to their ear and one hand on the wheel, and minimal attention to the task at hand. I’ll take my chances with the 1 drunk, thank you very much.
Very informative, but it’s disconcerting that one in fifty drivers is driving drunk.
The real concern is whether one in fifty drivers is incapable of driving safely, which is not at all a certain thing when it comes to alcohol intoxication. In fact, chronic alcoholics are actually much safer at a BAC several times higher than a teenager on his first six-pack of beer, mostly because they have learned how to compensate for their drunkenness.
This is why the appropriate metric is bad driving behavior, not absolute level of intoxication. The “legal” BAC used to be 0.10, and it was changed as a result primarily of political pressure from anti-alcohol groups like MADD, not because it’s scientifically demonstrable that every person is incapable of driving at anything over a 0.08 BAC.