Academic

RADLEY BALKO: If you?re serious about safety, abolish drunk-driving laws and focus on bad driving i?

By Glenn Reynolds

RADLEY BALKO: If you’re serious about safety, abolish drunk-driving laws and focus on bad driving instead. “Critics of the 0.08 standard predicted this would happen. The problem is that most people with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.10 don?t drive erratically enough to be noticed by police officers in patrol cars. So police began setting up roadblocks to catch them. But every cop manning a sobriety checkpoint aimed at catching motorists violating the new law is a cop not on the highways looking for more seriously impaired motorists. . . . These constitutionally dubious checkpoints have become little more than revenue generators for local governments. When local newspapers inquire about specific roadblocks after the fact, they inevitably find lots of fines for minor infractions but few drunk drivers.” Is anyone surprised to hear this?

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 02, 2011 (boomark / email).