It is no secret that our US highways are a dangerous path to be on. Thousands of people are faced with the needless and tragic loss of life each year due to the problem of drunk or impaired drivers. They are the largest risk factor for consequential vehicle accidents that could have been prevented. One solution to help with this problem is the use of police-established sobriety checkpoints. Although these checkpoints are often seen as a violation of rights established by the Fourth Amendment, they are constitutional. They simply make everyone safer on our roadways. Police-established sobriety checkpoints are not a violation of rights that were established by the Fourth Amendment due to the fact that they are reasonable, they deter drunk driving, and they have been ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics, accident-impairment is a factor in nearly one third of all traffic fatalities. Data released for the year 2014 shows that 9,967 people were killed in crashes involving an alcohol impaired driver. This accounts for 31 percent of all fatalities that occurred in the…show more content… They believe that the Fourth Amendment protects them from having to participate in a sobriety checkpoint because when law enforcement stops your vehicle to perform a roadside checkpoint, you are being subjected to a seizure without any reasonable suspicion that an offense has occurred. For this reason there are 11 states (Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) in our nation that does not conduct sobriety checkpoints due to them being prohibited by state law. Texas is the only state that prohibits sobriety checkpoints based on their interpretation of the US Constitution
