A Sept. 4 Journal-Courier column has some interesting statements by Sarah Longwell, managing director of the American Beverage Institute. Her bio states she is one of the country’s leading experts on traffic safety issues related to drunken driving laws and negligent driving. We should point out that the American Beverage Institute website identifies it as one “that fights laws designed to curb drunk driving” — and Longwell is a leading expert on traffic safety?
Longwell admits that drunken driving deaths “only” increased by 3 percent in 2015 (10,265) compared to 2014 (9,943) and that lawmakers continue to use the same failed policies to tackle what’s left of our drunken driving problem with DUI checkpoints. Longwell calls these sobriety checkpoints “intrusive and ineffective” and many drivers avoid the DUI checkpoints as they are widely publicized in media outlets.
Longwell needs to attend one such checkpoint and see how many of these drivers are apprehended after they turn off or turn around to avoid the safety check. We’re talking about human lives being saved by taking impaired drivers off our highways and she seems to think “3 percent” is not worth the effort.
Longwell says that roving, or saturation, patrols will seek out dangerous drivers and the states could eliminate DUI checkpoints and save the taxpayers from shelling out for “ineffective” enforcement methods, as well as being harassed on their way home from a barbecue. Roadside checks are a valuable prevention tool for more than arresting DUI offenders. Roadside checks ensure that motorists are using safety belts, have secured children in appropriate child restraint seats, and have insurance for their vehicle.
Numerous driving while revoked arrests are made at these roadside checks. Longwell failed to mention these life-saving facts.
Illinois State Police District 10 commander Louis Kink said in April that alcohol and drug impairment remains a significant factor in over 40 percent of all fatal motor vehicle crashes in Illinois. The Chicago Police Department conducted a DUI checkpoint on July 8-9 and of the 42 citations issued, three were DUI.
Only three? That’s three families we may have saved from losing loved ones. Yes, Ms. Longwell: ”only” three DUI arrests are saving lives.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that states had a compelling interest in eradicating drunken drivers and that public safety concerns outweigh any concerns about intrusion into drivers’ privacy. The court found checkpoints reduce alcohol-related crashes by about 20 percent, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
The Governors Highway Safety Association and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety report that in 12 states, sobriety checkpoints are not conducted. Thirty-eight states, the District of Columbia, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands conduct roadside safety checks. With Longwell’s position as an expert on traffic safety, she might assist Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and other highway safety professionals in bringing the 12 non-compliant states on board.
I would invite Longwell to accompany me the next time I visit my daughter at the cemetery. A very lonely place and a one-sided conversation on a crime — not an accident — that is 100 percent preventable. She was killed by a drunk on July 4, 1984, at age 24. If the drunken driver who killed my daughter had been stopped earlier in the day at one of these “ineffective and intrusive” roadside safety checks on that July 4, we would all have been better off.
There are no winners in alcohol-related crashes. The empty chair remains at every family function for us.
