Sobriety Checkpoints Bill Filed In Anticipation Of 81st Texas Legislature

Sobriety checkpoints on Texas highways will again be an issue during the 81st Session of the Texas Legislature, thanks to SB 298 by State Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas).

Carona’s bill would give the Texas Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement agencies the authority to create field sobriety checkpoints on public roadways–authority they’ve been salivating over for almost a decade.

Similar legislation has been introduced almost every legislative session since 2003, and likely prior. MADD, of course, is one of the driving forces behind this kind of legislation.

Although about 40 states have sobriety checkpoint laws, Texas hasn’t since 1994.

There are a lot of reasons that sobriety checkpoints are a bad idea. For one thing, they are ineffective–they often catch no one driving drunk while costing taxpayers as much as $10,000 per checkpoint. Since they are highly visible and publicized, habitual and more dangerous drunk drivers can easily avoid them.

In addition, they can cause a lot of problems for low-income drivers. For one thing, at such a checkpoint, you can bet they aren’t just going to be asking you to blow. They’ll be asking for insurance, registration, looking at every tail light, and trying, generally, to write as many tickets as possible.

This puts millions of low-income Texas drivers at risk of losing their vehicles and having to pay thousands of dollars in fines and fees when they weren’t even driving poorly. For example, if a poor Texan’s vehicle registration or inspection expires in between paychecks, they may have to wait until they get paid to get their car inspected or pay for their vehicle registration. While that driving around for a week with an expired MVI or license plate harms no one (after all, the state is still going go get their money) the ticket the low-income driver gets will harm them.

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