In most states, as far as I'm aware, your operation of a motor vehicle upon the highway is not a right, but a privliege. You pay fees for permits to do so (license, registration) and those permits come with specific requirements, such as producing your operator's permit upon request, etc. Many states have even made licensing a requirement for bicycles, motorized bikes and so forth (with some kind of sticker to "register" the vehicle instead of a plate).
Thus your "rights" when operating an auto are subject to restrictions you wouldn't face as a pedestrian.
It's not OK to operate a motor vehicle impaired - ever - at anytime. Some seem to think it is. I have zero tolerance for impaired drivers, there are just to many options for not getting behind the wheel.
Defined impaired. My job requires me to occasionally work nights if paged. I may also have a 9am meeting the next day and I have driven to work yapping & yawning the entire 35 miles. Coming home is worse after a busy day. Certainly being tired or drowsy is "impaired". Is that worth a conviction? If so, are you going to require businesses to pay cab fare for employees? Or require companies to allow people 8 hours of sleep?
My brother continued to work as much as he could while his oldest son was hospitalized with Lukemia. I'm sure his mind wasn't always on driving, especially after they said it was terminal. Is that "impaired" too? Keep in mind that any LEO could claim you were driving "impaired" in those cases and there's no way for you to prove otherwise.
What makes you think the cops were stopping the cars randomly? If they were, they were doing it wrong and the stops were unconstitutional. In order for a DUI checkpoint to be legal, they have to stop every car, or, for instance, every other car, or every tenth car, etc.....Once they stop the car, I'm not sure if they can "randomly" ask whoever they want to submit to a consent search, but to stop them to begin with, it can't be random.
If their queue will hold 8 cars, then the cops can fill that queue with the next 8 cars coming along. As long as they have a written procedure that says when the queue is down to 3, 4 or 5 cars they can grab the next few cars to fill the queue, then the courts have deemed that acceptable. Or they can stop every car, every other car, etc. The part that is
stupid IMO is that if the next car is an "odd" car that should be waved through but it's full of wild twenty-somethings looking like partying frat-boys they can't stop them (unless some idiot holds up a vodka bottle or something).
They always also ask the standard questions "where are you going?" "where have you been?" "Have you been consuming alcohaulic beverages" "Are there any illegal drugs or weapons in the vehicle." Only an idiot would admit to being drunk in a vehicle, or admit to having illegal drugs or weapons in the car.
"None of your business" is probably the most correct answer to the first two questions. But a response of "I don't need to answer that." is probably more politcally correct. To the beverage question I've always like "No, but I just ate a garlic bratwurst if you want a breath sample."
You'd be surprised what responses you get to the "drugs or weapons" question. Lots of idiots just give themselves away because they're so nervous. Personally, I interpret that as "any illegal drugs or
illegal weapons in the car?" and since I don't own any illegal weapons it's amusing. But responding (in today's climate) with "uh...you mean non-nuclear, right?" will probably mean a long time explaining your sense of humor.
