I’d like to see how you mandate this, and I say that while noting the irony of seeing you argue both for and against enforcement of particular traffic laws.
Where I live, you can drive through a speed trap at 10 MPH over the speed limit and not get pulled over, but virtually everyone is driving over the speed limit. I don’t think pulling someone over for doing 80 in a 70 is a bad thing if only one driver is doing 80.
I argue for prioritization, not complete non-enforcement.
Where I live, cops sit in their cars all day unless they’re running down a speeder. You can run a red light in front of them and they’ll just watch, but if you’re doing 10 over, even if you’re the only car on your side of the highway, they’ll light you up.
That’s stupid. Some guy going 65 in a 55 is much less likely to kill someone than the guy going the speed limit through a red light. Deal with the red light runners and the smartphone-distracted drivers, and the drunks, and all the other drivers who present an immediate risk to others’ lives. THEN go after the speeders.
Mandating is easy. What kind of tickets are the cops bringing back at end of watch? If it’s all speeding tickets, then they weren’t looking real hard for serious violations. If that becomes a consistent pattern, then maybe Officer Speedtrap needs to do some time on foot patrol until he gets his priorities straight.
I’m not sure how the repeat dui offenders stay on the road. I had a dui many moons ago at 19 years old. I believe the fines were over $1k, I lost my license for a period, and had to pay higher insurance premiums for…ten years, maybe? I actually paid the fines and it was a pretty good deterrent for me. I suppose they could lock more people in jail for repeat dui’s (and supposedly they do in MS, as a 3rd offense dui is a felony). I’m not sure what other punishments could be offered that would stop the repeat offenders. We have the death penalty, but not even that completely deters people from committing murder.
As long as we’re discussing the “right to drive”, and some are claiming there are no such thing as rights…Shadow - who / what makes you think you have the right to drive unimpeded by a random roadblock? If we truly don’t have rights, they can pull you over at any time, right?
The Fourth Amendment, which is a privilege granted me by the defining document of our government. Now, if the government decides to scrap the 4th, as it is attempting to do in a number of cases, there’s not much I can do about it, individually anyway.
Now that I’ve shown you where in the Constitution it says that cops shouldn’t be searching me for evidence that I’m drunk unless they have probable cause, I’m eager for you to return the favor and show me where the Constitution says I have the “right” to drive a car. 
An interesting little anecdote regarding random roadblocks.
One of the Driver Ed teachers on our faculty (in the days before we had to eliminate that program because of budgetary problems…) came in fuming one morning. It seems that the previous night, he had been driving on a local highway, came over a rise in the road that prevented adequate forward vision, and was confronted with a sea of cars stopped for a random inspection. He was able to stop w/o hitting anyone, but… just barely…
That’s right… the “brilliant” gendarmes in that town were so brain-dead that they couldn’t foresee the problems that might result from setting-up a random roadblock immediately after a blind rise in the road. According to this DE teacher, he “reamed a new one” for the cop who demanded to see his credentials.
While I don’t know whether he was telling the truth about his hostile reaction to that cop, the teacher did have a “politically-connected” last name, so he might have felt that he had more freedom to express his thoughts to a cop than the Average Joe would have been able to do w/o being arrested on some type of trumped-up charge.
That’s great, but I thought this was the same document that didn’t afford those rights to black folks or women as stated by someone previously in relation to the preamble?
I don’t want a police state, by any means. But, I don’t have a problem with a random check as long as they don’t decide they want to turn a German Shepherd loose in my vehicle or ransack it. I show my license and I’m on my way. If they ask “Where are you headed tonight?”, I say I’m in route to rob a liquor store but I shouldn’t give myself away (I did say that once).
My point is twofold. Either we have rights (which someone said we didn’t even have a right to life at all) or we don’t. And you can’t have your cake and it eat too. If you want the non-licensed, repeat offender knuckleheads off the road (I think we both do), random checks are a means to accomplishing that (or at least identifying those folks).
I tend to disagree with you from time to time, but I hope you don’t take offense. I enjoy hearing a different perspective, whether I necessarily agree with you or not on the particular topic.
I do see roadblocks as a pain. But I see the benefit too.
The way I see it, there are two approaches to the issue of DUI checkpoints.
One is that, if you’re not violating the law, you have nothing to fear.
The other is that if you don’t have probable cause, you don’t have grounds to conduct a search or accuse me of a crime.
The first argument is an easy one to understand, but what influences my position on this issue is that countless soldiers have either died or put their lives on the line to protect and preserve my constitutional rights, including those rights outlined under the 4th Amendment, so voluntarily surrendering those rights to a police officer who has little or no regard for the Bill of Rights seems downright disrespectful of the sacrifices made by those soldiers.
So any time I get stopped and questioned by a police officer, my first instinct is to calmly and respectfully exercise my 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment rights. They don’t seem to like it when I do that, but they always seem to get over their disappointment.
You have to decide what is an “unreasonable” search and seizure, I suppose. Unreasonable to me is coming inside the car. It’s not unreasonable for them to ask to see my license or insurance (or prove my “right to drive”). I do find it unreasonable when they ask those “where are you coming from” questions, because I don’t think that’s any of their business and I doubt most folks who just knocked off a liquor store say “I just left that liquor store you just got the call about on your radio”. So unreasonable is, like most things, open to interpretation.
I did get stopped at a roadblock late one night (10 pm or so) in a rental car with out of state plates (TX). As I rolled down the window, I could hear them muttering “Texas plates” amongst themselves. My kids were tiny, I’d just left my mothers and was headed home. I suppose Texas plates indicated I could be a drug trafficker, so I get that. Profiling, I suppose, but there’s a necessary profiling and an unjust profiling, so I get it. They asked why I had TX plates, of course I told them the car was a rental, etc. Then they started asking for proof of insurance and I got a bit peeved. I’ve only rented two cars in my life. It may be up to me to insure it. I don’t know. My kids are asleep and they’re shining those flashlights in everybody’s eyes. When they asked where my proof of insurance was, I said mine was in my wife’s wrecked car. Call the rental company for proof of insurance on this car, because I have no idea. They didn’t really know what to say I don’t think. Ah well, worked out ok in the end. They’re just doing their job, I suppose. As long as they stay outside the car, I can tolerate the questioning.
I also once got a ticket for going 70 in a 65 mph zone. But that’s a whole other long story 
I enjoy the relative freedom of being able to drive if and when I want, by whatever route I prefer, being able to instantly change my mind and change where I’m going or which route I take, etc. I truly dread the future time when I no longer should/can drive and thereby lose my independence.
This past weekend I got a rude reminder that self-driving cars will have good purposes in addition to providing independence to those no longer able to drive or who are never able to for some reason. About 130 miles from home I suddenly became too ill to drive farther; not such I needed medical assistance but I definitely wasn’t safe to keep driving. So I pulled off the road to a gas station/convenience store and contacted friends who, God bless them, drove all that way to rescue me, my friend driving me home in my car while her husband followed in theirs. Had my car had the option to be safely, functionally self-driving I could have gotten home on my own without friends making a 260 mile round trip to rescue me and I would have been home two and a half hours sooner.
So although I am leery of self-driving cars I also hope the technology is well enough developed and affordable for me to have and use at will in coming years when I consistently need it.
Side note, my situation was proof of how valuable a cell phone is when traveling!!!
This thread has wandered beyond my pay grade.
Regardless of your pay grade, everyone should have a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights, and how to exercise those rights, so I encourage your input regardless of your pay grade. 
In an attempt to return this thread to an automotive theme…
Yesterday I was driving behind a woman who was operating her Accord sedan about 10 mph under the speed limit. At the intersection where I needed to make a right turn, she signaled that she was also going to turn right, so I figured that I would be saddled with driving in back of her for another couple of miles.
Well, as it turned-out, she didn’t turn right. From the right lane, with her right directional signal activated, she turned LEFT, directly into the path of an Infiniti sedan. To say that it was a close call doesn’t even begin to describe the situation.
Could a self-driving car do any worse than this brain-dead woman?
But then would self driving cars recognize and avoid her and her friends or other self driving cars that suddenly have a sensor failure?
The Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution. We were at that time discussing the former. Nothing about the D of I is law.
And the Constitution does extend those rights to black people and women, now. See the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments.
If that were true in a meaningful way, then drunks wouldn’t be killing almost 11,000 people per year. Apparently, random DUI checks aren’t working well enough.
What they really are is a way for cops to have fun playing Checkpoint Charlie, catching an occasional drunk while harassing and inconveniencing hundreds of law abiding citizens.
It’s far more effective to park outside a bar and pull over anyone who weaved his way to the car.
Really, though, it’s not entirely the cops’ fault. Our lax DUI laws are to blame. The cops arrest a drunk, and a few days later he pleads guilty to a lesser charge, gets maybe a few months suspension which he ignores, and keeps driving.
Meanwhile, the cops are required to enforce truly stupid laws such as the “care-command-control” law which states that if I am drunk and am standing near my car with the car keys, or sleeping it off in the back seat, I am legally driving drunk despite not driving at all. Merely having the ability to drive while drunk is enough to get me the same penalty as the jackass who actually drives while drunk.
Our entire traffic enforcement system needs a results-oriented overhall rather than the scattershot, “throw things at the wall and hope something sticks” approach we take now.
And no, I don’t take offense. Healthy debate is good.
They do catch a lot of DUI’S at some of these check points. When I lived in NY - one check point in a 2 hour period nabbed over a dozen.
Here in NH our state legislature said road blocks are unconstitutional. Traffic laws are left to the each state. Feds have very little say what each state can do.
I agree 100%. When you have people on the road with a valid drivers license (or not) that have more then a few DUI’s - somethings wrong. First offense - major fine and dui classes. Second offense - Loss of license for a year. Third offense - mandatory 2 years in prison.
And how many non-drunks were detained by that same checkpoint? “Catch a criminal no matter what it does to the non-criminals” isn’t the right approach either.
Park 12 squad cars outside a decently popular bar at closing time and I bet you get the same number of arrests, without harassing law-abiding people.
I’d also add to your penalties mandatory jail time for being caught driving with no license.
A few hundred…so what? Those good citizens were inconvenienced for a few minutes…getting those drunks off the road could easily have saved lives. I know which option I’ll choose every single time
Good points on setting up the road blocks near bars and other areas likely to have people breaking the law. I think they do that quite a bit, in my area anyway. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to have random checks in high crime areas either, in my opinion.
I know there were other amendments affording women and minorities the right to vote! I don’t think you understood my point exactly in that part of the discussion, but never mind.
They used to set up road blocks near a VFW in the dry county I grew up in. It was a party joint for veterans and non vets alike. They issued a lot of dui’s there I’m sure.
Oddly enough, they didn’t set up those road blocks near the country club.
Poor folks went to the vfw, rich folks went to the country club. I guess rich folks can handle their alcohol better (sarcasm font on).
Good!
Then you won’t mind if we start rooting through your house, right? I mean, if we search everyone’s house, we’ll find bomb-making materials in at least a few of them. Might stop a terror plot, and that’s worth shredding the 4th amendment. Lives are on the line!
The idea when setting up our justice system was that the government should need evidence that a crime is occurring before it starts harassing the citizens. That’s just as apparent for mass traffic detentions as it is for random home searches.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
That isn’t what I said. Roadblocks should not be used. Period.
Park with a view of the bar’s parking lot. Anyone seen drunkenly wobbling to their car gets pulled over when they drive off the lot. Efficient, easy DUI citations without harassing innocent people.
What you consider an inconvenience I consider a violation of my Fourth Amendment rights.
You can surrender your constitutional rights any time you like. You try to do that with my constitutional rights, and we have a problem.