The Los Angeles DUI Law Blog

Holiday Season Wraps Up, But State Not Finished With DUI Checkpoints

By Laura Fishman on January 5, 2010 8:53 AM | No TrackBacks

Federal and state funding provided numerous DUI checkpoints in Los Angeles County for the holiday season, in order to send the message that drunk driving is unsafe and illegal. Drivers may have expected for the checkpoints to stop after the New Year's Eve holiday weekend, but people may be surprised when they learn that California's Office of Traffic Safety is launching the most extensive extensive program in the country for 2010.

California traffic safety officials will spend $8 million this year on sobriety checkpoints in 150 different cities, where the state plans to increase the number of DUI checkpoints by 50 percent statewide, according to the Sacramento Bee. Many Californians, including some Los Angeles DUI defense lawyers, see sobriety checkpoints as ineffective means of curbing the amount of drunk drivers on state roads.

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that DUI checkpoints typically result in few DUI arrests. Perhaps the reason for this is the way checkpoints must be conducted in California (see earlier blog post "Los Angeles DUI Attorneys Analyze Sobriety Checkpoints"), where there are many constraints on how authorities can arrest somebody through a DUI checkpoint.

Yet proponents of the program feel that by having an increased number of DUI checkpoints on the road, people will gain awareness about traffic safety and DUI laws. The Sacramento Bee reports that approximately one quarter of all road deaths in California are alcohol related. Alcohol-involved crashes also injured 28,457 people in California in 2008. Perhaps people shouldn't put a price on a life, and the state should invest as much money as possible into road safety and funding toward anti-drunk driving campaigns.
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