You may have been aware of the increased efforts to target DUI suspects in recent years. This development has come at the cost of the curtailment of various civil and individual liberties and the most common justification given is the need to lessen the numbers of accidents caused by drunk drivers on the nation’s roads and highways.

This duality was reflected by no less than the U.S. Supreme Court who has admitted that while DUI checkpoints are seemingly in violation of citizen’s rights granting them freedom from illegal detention by police officers, the danger caused by drunk drivers far outweigh any inconsequential civil rights violations. But what is the basis for this ruling?

In years past, incidences of fatalities resulting from traffic incidents included categories for “alcohol-caused” deaths. With the introduction of field sobriety checkpoints, the decrease in the legal limits blood alcohol levels and automatic on the spot revocations of driver’s licenses however, this category was changed to “alcohol-related” deaths. The implications of this were staggering. This meant that even if the driver in question did not have nay alcohol in the blood at all, yet hit a pedestrian who DID have alcohol in his or her system, the driver would still be involved in an “alcohol-related” incident! In another example, if two drivers-both with no alcohol in their systems-were involved in an accident with one of the cars carrying a passenger who WAS intoxicated, both derivers would still fall under the category of “alcohol related ” incidents! In addition, if a police officer decides on the spot that one of the driver’s was DUI, the death would be marked down as “alcohol-related” even if subsequent test show that the driver did not have alcohol at all.

Of course this has raised a number of concerns regarding the legality of these laws. A report released by the General Accounting Office or GAO in 1999 in particular brought forth a number of concerns about these conclusions. The GAO has categorically stated that there was no conclusive evidence that the present .08% BAC laws resulted in any appreciable decrease in alcohol related deaths. Since the statistics did not point to any logical conclusions regarding alcohol-related deaths, they were even less relevant with regard to alcohol-caused deaths.

A more disturbing fact is the realization that of the 18,000 deaths attributed to drunk driving, as little as 5,000 of these actually involved a drunk driver! Some other research groups have even tagged the figure as being significantly lower, with some saying 3,000 was closer to the truth. It appears then that the figures used by the government and groups such as MADD are severely bloated, which makes the passing of unconstitutional DUI laws even more reprehensible.