If you’re not 16, you can’t drive. If you’re under 21 you can’t drink alcohol — in public anyway.
But no matter what age you may be, drinking and driving is not allowed anywhere in the U.S.
It may be law, but it’s not the case.
Hundreds of thousands of people, and I’m not being conservative when I say this, drink alcohol and then proceed to drive home or to another party.
And every weekend across the country, police and other law enforcement agencies have sobriety checkpoints along busy streets and highways. Every weekend, lots of drunks get thrown in the slammer and booked for DUI.
I encountered one of these checkpoints over the Labor Day holiday. My friends and I had a few drinks. I was driving and can honestly say that I had one beer and we decided to wait for an hour before going to drop off our friends.
Driving along Truxtun Avenue at 1 a.m., nothing was out of the ordinary. Traffic was subdued and most people were already home.
A sheriff’s patrol car whizzed by, over the speed limit, toward where I was about to turn. As soon as I turned the corner, I knew my fatal mistake. I had steered the car toward a checkpoint. There was no turning back.
Once we rolled up to the first cop, I knew that this was not going to be pretty. He asked for my license and the registration. He looked at my friends and I, light shining in our eyes and said, “Pull up there.”
He pointed to the side street and we were signaled to stop the car, turn off the engine and get out, one by one.
Two officers approached me and there were police everywhere. They asked how much I had to drink. I responded, “Not enough.”
I fielded five sobriety tests and after asking me 20 questions, they told me to sit on the curb next to my friends. They knew we were not intoxicated, searched our car for drugs and booze and — grudgingly — let us go.
But as I drove away, blessing myself that I had not slipped up, I wondered why do we even need these checkpoints?
Simply put, placing these officers at a checkpoint to pick up the drunks is not a good use of time. They could be putting effort toward the thieves that break into cars and prevent shootings.
I don’t think I should have been on the road. I don’t think anyone who drinks and drives should get away with it. But I think that there are enough cops around when there aren’t checkpoints to spot the ones who may be drinking and driving.
These checkpoints are a fun challenge for those who try to beat the system.
There have been enough checkpoints that people know where to go and where not to go. It’s been more than three months and I still refuse to drive Truxtun Extension. People have trained themselves into acting sober.
And the ones who are good enough to not drink and drive, roll up to these checkpoints and get hassled.
It’s not a win-win for anyone.
Couldn’t these officers be patrolling downtown, where much of the drinking starts? Driving around town, watching for those who look like they may be under the influence?
A friend of mine was pulled over this weekend for not wearing a seatbelt. He was intoxicated beyond belief, under 21 and had two cases of beer in the trunk. He got busted and will pay the price.
That’s what the police should be doing. People who get stopped at the checkpoints will try to look sober and will, more often than not, fool the cops. If you get stopped out of the blue, I bet you’d be a bit more nervous to see why you were stopped.
This holiday season, plenty of people will get thrown in jail for having too much eggnog or having a few beers at a family gathering.
Filling up the drunk tanks is not productive and just creates a backlog in the legal system.
Simply put, stop the checkpoints, stop the hassle, go out and police the community. Catch the drunks in the act, not at a checkpoint. You’ll probably save more lives that way.