Drunk Driving: A Call for Improved Control Methods and New Technologies
Today, the government uses one efficient method, called sobriety checkpoints, to minimize alcohol-impaired driving. There are many checkpoints in different states of the USA, that help to recognize whether a driver is sober or not. Sobriety checkpoints require two police officers, who guard road posts and observe for any suspicious driving. However, such checkpoints do not solve the problem of drunk driving since they cannot embrace every street and every corner where vehicles can drive. Sobriety checkpoints can be helpful only “when used as a part of a comprehensive enforcement program” (Lindquist and Wendt 1). For example, if a person drives too fast or too slow, the police
…show more content…
The driver will be asked to blow into a breathalyzer, which will show the level of alcohol in his or her breath. However, such method needs time, high costs on production of the devices and police officers’ salaries, and their attentiveness. Therefore, the risk of mistakes is too high. Nevertheless, the method is effective to minimize but not to prevent alcohol-impaired driving. If a sobriety checkpoint is not a hundred percent effective for preventing driving while under an alcohol influence, the federal government should encourage every vehicle company to set modern devices in all their cars to minimize and, probably, extirpate the problem of alcohol-impaired driving. The authorities can claim that the new technologies require high costs and are not profitable since not every citizen of the USA will be able to buy a more expensive vehicle. However, when taking into account the economic cost of alcohol-impaired-driving crashes that was $49.8 billion in 2010, implementing new devices will cover these expenses