Drunken-driving checkpoints could soon be popping up on Texas roads after a state Senate committee gave its unanimous blessing Wednesday.
Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, told fellow lawmakers that checkpoints would give law enforcement agencies a new tool to fight drunken driving in a state where alcohol-related crashes run well above the national average.
"Sobriety checkpoints are an important tool in combating these tragic and preventable deaths," Ms. Zaffirini said.
Texas is the most populous state without sobriety checkpoints, Ms. Zaffirini said.
Forty states now use them. She said 1,642 people died statewide in alcohol-related crashes in 2004, equating to 46 percent of the state's total traffic fatalities. The national average, she said, is 39 percent.
Sobriety checkpoints have been outlawed in Texas since 1994, when a state court ruled they were unconstitutional because the Legislature had not established uniform guidelines.
But Ms. Zaffirini's bill creates guidelines, including provisions that would limit checkpoints to four hours at one location and would require law enforcement agencies to publicize the operations. It also would prohibit choosing checkpoint locations based on an area's ethnic or socioeconomic makeup.
The advance publicity would not reveal specific information about checkpoints' times and locations, but it would give motorists a general heads-up that checkpoints will be in force.
"The intention is not to go out and arrest a whole lot more people," said Georgia Chakiris, a regional administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's office in Fort Worth. "It is to get people to make a choice, to decide ahead of time whether to reduce the amount that they are going to consume, or to designate a driver."
The bill, which now goes to the full Senate, still has some kinks to be worked out. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, raised concerns that the bill could allow police to arrest passengers for public intoxication.
And critics contend that targeted DWI patrols are a more effective method to curb drunken driving than "roadblocks" that inconvenience legions of sober drivers.
"We want our resources to go toward targeting these impaired drivers and not wasting our time on thousands of innocent Texans that are just simply going from point A to point B," said Kristin Etter of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
Opponents also have raised constitutional objections, arguing that checkpoints subject motorists to police scrutiny without probable cause.
But that argument doesn't wash with Joyce Adejumo of Austin, whose son Mitchie was paralyzed at age 3 when his father crashed into a culvert while drinking beer. Ms. Adejumo's son lived for more than 17 years after the crash before he died in January.
"My son wasn't asked whether his constitutional rights were violated," Ms. Adejumo said.
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