Sobriety Checkpoints: Privacy and Legality

Who could possibly be against sobriety checkpoints? You know, those random police stops where they check every fifth driver or so, tell drivers to crank down the window and then ask them questions to see if they’re driving while intoxicated. We should all want drunk drivers off the road, right? The obvious answer is yes. But… there’s a personal privacy problem.

First, some facts. In South Dakota, sobriety checkpoints take place statewide every month, hitting approximately 15 counties, allegedly as a gentle reminder imploring motorists to make ‘responsible choices’. Harmless? Right? No one wants to die at the hands of a drunk driver. But just how effective are they?

In my state, the most populated counties are usually targeted, those being Codington, Brookings, Lincoln, Meade, Minnehaha and Pennington counties. For a sample look at effectiveness, let’s look at Minnehaha County, home of Sioux Falls, with close to a quarter million residents.

In 2025, the county was subject to six sobriety checkpoints. The number of vehicles stopped totaled 415. Of those, only 32 ended up being subject to a breathalyzer test, and of those, only two (2) DUI arrests were issued. Doing the simple math, less than 8% were tested, and less than ½ of 1% were actually arrested for DUI.

To someone, such as myself, with a math inclined brain and math-oriented way of thinking, this seems like a complete waste of taxpayer funding. However, many laws tend to be created and enforced due to emotions, not numerical logic.

Yearly alcohol-related crashes - and deaths from such - vary widely in South Dakota. Deaths have ranged from 28-58 since 2017, while crashes generally hover between 5-6% of all crashes. More people actually die from alcohol poisoning (24% of alcohol related deaths) than from alcohol related crashes (19%). Granted, alcohol poisonings don’t take innocent people with them.

Those are the numbers, but what about the legality? Supreme Courts have determined repeatedly that sobriety checkpoints are perfectly legal - despite the Fourth Amendment - in the name of safety (i.e., emotions). Authorities are supposed to have reasonable suspicion before invading one’s privacy. Sobriety checkpoints completely ignore that right. A better way to catch drunk drivers would be for police to sit outside a bar, wait until an obviously inebriated person stumbles out, then see if they sit behind the driver’s seat. If they do, wait until they take off, follow them, look for signs of reckless driving (remember, reasonable suspicion supposedly required), then pull them over. Then test and arrest if need be.

Almost certainly, such actions would result in a better arrest rate than the less than ½ of 1% that Minnehaha County sobriety checkpoints achieved. It also wouldn’t require the time-consuming harassment of innocent individuals just trying to drive home from a shopping spree at the mall or bingo night at the church.

For all those emotional people crying, “Wait till someone you love dies in an alcohol-related crash”, let it be known, I have. A good neighbor (who became a good personal friend) was killed by a drunk driver. However, there’s more effective ways than checkpoints.

Source used: farmforum.net