However, the findings did show a significance on four other levels. On average women drank less than men and women thought sobriety checkpoints were more effective than men. Males however had been through more sobriety checkpoints than women and believed DWI tests were less accurate than women.
Drunk drivers cause one half of the approximately 50,000 traffic deaths that occur each year, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 1994 there were 14,060 deaths caused by drunk drivers. On the average across all hours of the day, 2% or one in fifty of the drivers on the road are driving under the influence. One of the many efforts that have been made to reduce the tragic consequences of drunk driving on our roads and highways has been the use of sobriety checkpoints. Sobriety checkpoints try to control the DWI behavior of the motoring public by appealing to the public's presumed fear of being caught. The goal of sobriety checkpoints is to increase deterrence of the DWI violators and thereby reduce the number of accidents, deaths, and injuries caused by impaired drivers.
Legally driving while intoxicated (DWI) is defined by state law as driving with a specific amount or percentage of alcohol in the blood. The individual's Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC), can be measured through breath, urine, or blood tests. By 1989 all but four states had adopted .10 as the BAC at which drivers are considered legally drunk (Jacobs, 1989). Criteria for determining the .10 BAC means that alcohol constitutes 1/10 of 1% of all blood in the drivers system. This amount may not seen large, but .10 BAC has an adverse affect on reaction time, vision, judgment, and the ability to brake and control speed, even small quantities of alcohol reduce sensorimotor coordination.
It was now until the early 80's that society began to acknowledge that a drunk driving problem existed, not even then was an attack mounted against this devastating problem. A major obstacle was that society accepted drinking, it is ingrained in our culture. The act of driving while intoxicated was almost immune from political criticism until recently (Robin, 1991).
The usual way drunk drivers are identified and apprehended is when a police officer stops a motorists for some type of suspicious, unusual, improper, or illegal driving behavior. An officer must have a reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle. The suspicion is the legal standard (evidence) needed to warrant the officer's stopping or deterring motorists at their own desecration. The purpose of the stop is through future investigation to get additional information to either confirm or dispel the officer's suspicion of criminal conduct (Jacob, 1989).
Historically, roadside sobriety tests used by the police to make DWI arrests and to build cases to stand up in court varied widely. They were administered in a non uniform fashion and ultimately depended on the officer's subjective evaluation of the drivers motor coordination skills (Jacob, 1989).
Field Sobriety Tests are simple tests of motor coordination used to aid police officers in determining if there is sufficient cause to make a DWI arrest. Field Sobriety Test include: The Rhomberg Balance Test which is a test where the driver stands while the officer looks for swaying, stumbling, and falling. The Walk The Line is when the driver is to walk a straight line, heel to toe. Finger To Nose is when the driver begins with arms to the side, is instructed to touch their nose with the tip of the index finger, the tests checks the driver's peripheral vision and hand eye coordination. The Alphabet Test is when the driver is asked to recite the alphabet slowly, if the officer detects any loss of concentration that is signaled by not remembering what letter comes next (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1976).
Many people see sobriety checkpoints as a violation to their 4th Amendment rights from an unreasonable search and seizure. In general, courts assess the reasonableness issue by balancing the interests of the State saved by the intrusion against the privacy rights of the individual subjected to the seizure (Rockel, 1984).
My purpose of this study is to find out if the fear of a sobriety checkpoint has any influence over the amount one drinks before driving a vehicle and if there were any significant differences in the beliefs between genders.
If I were to do this study over I might have compared two different age groups and looked at as one gets older their incidence of driving under the influence lessens with maturity as opposed to younger subjects. The next study I would have definitely used a larger sample size.
The large numbers of police-citizen interactions produced by checkpoints promises to affect public perception of the certainty of punishment for law violators (Deitch, 1984). Statistics are unstable and changes in them cannot be relied on to produce convincing proof of an affect. DWI prevention's through basic shifts in attitudes and values, thus can work. Given enough time, it will work, but the key is time. It seems to be a truism of society that a full generation or more must grow to maturity (Dipietro, 1992). Of course that does not help now when it is the parents who are driving drunk, we need the solution now, and sobriety checkpoints may help this nationwide problem.
The key to the reduction of drunk driving lies in what the average citizen will and will not accept. The position of law enforcement is society requires us to take a leadership role in public education (Ross, 1994). Although both theory and experience point to the different potential of sobriety checkpoints as a drunk driving law enforcement practice, the use of checkpoints by American police are often sporadic and unenthusiastic.
Deitch, Lewis; Thompson, Larry N. (1984). The Sobriety Checkpoint: A Proactive Approach to DWI Deterrence. 51, 42-44. Dipietro, Louis (1992). "Sobriety Checkpoints: Constitutional Considerations. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. 61, 27-31.
Jacobs, James (1989). Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma. University of Chicago Press.
International Association of Chiefs of Police (1976). Alcohol Enforcement
Countermeasures. Police Operations and Management.
Robin, Gerald (1991). Waging the Battle Against Drunk Driving: Issues Countermeasures, and Effectivness.
Rockel, Henry (1984). Sobriety Checkpoints. The Police Chief. 38-41.
Ross, Laurence (1994). Sobriety Checkpoints: American Style. Journal of Criminal Justice. 437-44.