I'm responding to the editorial, "Do sobriety checkpoints make any sense?" (Opinion, May 9, page 10). Let's see, Sarah Longwell, managing director for ABI, seems to think that because the checkpoint was so well publicized and because Pleasanton spent a lot of officers' time and taxpayer money to arrest "just four" drunk drivers out of 1,134 cars stopped, that the meager 0.3 percent success rate wasn't money well spent.
I can tell you it was. The purpose of sobriety checkpoints are not to catch drunk drivers, but to keep them off the road in the first place, and to provide education to the other drivers stopped. Was the money well spent saving the lives of potential victims of these four drunk drivers, your children, your parents, your friends, your husband, your wife? Were the 1,134 cars stopped impacted in other ways other then a mere inconvenience? Ask them. If it was so well publicized, why were four drivers apprehended?
A drunk driver took the life of my father and brother in 1976, they were 39 years old and 11 years old, returning from a trip down the American River. Because laws and education since 1976, the related drunk driving deaths are down. That means, saving your families' lives.
Thank you to the City of Pleasanton for spending my taxpaying dollars to making the roads safer thru education and awareness.