Rather than frightening responsible adults who may have had a beer at a restaurant by setting up roadblocks, the South River police should be focused on tracking down and arresting drunk drivers.
Roadblocks are not designed to catch drunk drivers.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has stated that with roadblocks, “You aren’t trying to arrest a lot of people. You’re trying to persuade the community that they are facing a higher probability of arrest.”
Unfortunately, chronic alcohol abusers, the core of today’s drunk-driving problem, don’t respond to these sorts of threats.
The NHTSA reported that the best way to get habitual drunk drivers off the road is with roving police patrols, which net nearly three times the drunk-driving arrests as roadblocks.
Let’s go after drunk drivers with law enforcement methods that work.
John Doyle
executive director
The American Beverage Institute
Washington, D.C.