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Comment by mytochar | Hacker News Reader

I found this part particularly interesting, for strange reasons: "now less than 0.25% of drivers tested are over the alcohol limit"

Why are they testing those other 399 people (0.25% = 1 in 400)? Driving while drowsy? drunk driving checkpoints? Someone's a little swervy and gets noticed?

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In Sweden, like much of Europe, the police can (and routinely does) stop everybody for a breathalyzer test.

I understand that in the US the police can't do that; they need some reason (like swervy driving) to apply a breathalyzer test.

random stops or roadblocks?

Canada (BC at least) does roadblocks.

The road is not actually physically blocked, but every vehicle that comes on that road is hailed to stop for the test. If someone takes a U-turn to avoid the test, there's typically a motorbike or a patrol car ready to chase.

The U.S. does this too. Happens maybe once a month around San Jose, for example. Usually you can avoid it because Google Maps detects the huge back-up and routes you around it :) if you know what to look for (half-mile stretch of red traffic in a place where that's not the norm on a week-end evening), it's generally not hard to spot.

In most small (>100K people) US cities I've lived in there are many mandatory checkpoints on "notorious" nights - like New Year's Eve. They don't block all the roads - you can circumvent them. I've never actually been required to do the breathalyzer so the police are probably just stopping obvious over-the-limit drivers.

The police sometimes do random sobriety checkpoints.

At least in Illinois, they're euphemistically called "road-side safety inspections". I had a limo driver once get caught not wearing his seatbelt by a spotter at the beginning of a backup leading into one. The car was radioed in and, even though he put on his seat belt while in line (in his mind, well before any officer could see he wasn't wearing one), he received a citation when we finally made it to the actual inspection point.

I never even noticed he wasn't wearing one. On the rare occasion I have a driver who doesn't use it, I tell them that story.

I don't know the answer there, but in Australia I regularly get breath tested for drink driving at 'drunk driving checkpoints'. The basically just stop and test as much traffic as they can. Othertimes they will just randomly pull me over and test me.

I don't know about other countries, but in the US, police sobriety checkpoints are only legal if the cops have no discretion about whom to stop. http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1935

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