Traffic Law Enforcement Packet, Campaign Safe and Sober Use of Sobriety Checkpoints for Effective Impaired Driving Enforcement Table of Contents Business Reply Card Air Bag Success Stories Rescue Procedures for Air Bag-Equipped Vehicles Public Info. Through the years, sobriety checkpoint guidelines have been designed to give law enforcement agencies a uniform and successful method to plan, operate, and evaluate the use of sobriety checkpoints. If an agency plans to attack an impaired driving problem with checkpoints, it should begin by looking at existing departmental policy and any constraints imposed by local, state, or Federal judicial systems. Sobriety checkpoints involve the stopping of every vehicle or a specific sequence of vehicles at a predetermined, fixed location to detect impaired drivers.
Sobriety checkpoints allow officers to stop vehicles without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
The checkpoint should be minimally intrusive to the motorist. Successful sobriety checkpoint strategists advocate that this type of enforcement activity be integrated aggressively with a continuous, systematic public information and education effort. This approach maximizes the general deterrent effect and increases the perception that motorists who operate a vehicle while impaired by alcohol or other drugs are apprehended. A major issue for the courts is site selection for the checkpoints. Law enforcement officials must consider arrest rates and impaired driver crash rates for that area and time of day.