Police departments throughout the Bay Area have been capitalizing on the activity surrounding some of the more popular restaurants in this community, setting up DUI checkpoints to make sure that patrons enjoying the world-class drinking and dining opportunities throughout this region aren’t putting any community members at risk a long way.
For years now, police departments throughout this region have been announcing where and when they are going to set up many of the DUI checkpoints that stretch throughout the San Francisco bay area.
These checkpoints have proven to be a wonderful deterrent against individuals thinking about driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence. DUI arrests across the board are down significantly in this part of California, even if San Francisco and the surrounding area still has relatively higher instances of DUIs and DWIs than most of the rest of this state.
Just this past week, police officers in Santa Rosa screened more than 800 different vehicles moving through a popular neighborhood filled with amazing restaurants, resting for different individuals for driving under the influence of alcohol. Two other people were arrested for possessing illegal drugs or having a probation violation, and 23 more individuals had been cited for driving without a license or driving when their license was suspended/revoked.
In the Rohnert Park community, almost 1200 vehicles were stopped and moved through a DUI checkpoint outside of a bustling restaurant community as well. A single person was arrested for driving under the influence, with another being arrested for violating probation as well as a domestic violence restraining order.
As you can see, both of these checkpoints proved to be a fantastic deterrent at stopping people visiting the restaurants in those areas from drinking too much and then choosing to slide behind the wheel of their vehicle.
Of course, DUI checkpoints aren’t perfect solutions when people are committed to drinking and driving.
A young man, whose identity has not been released to the public, crashed directly into a DUI checkpoint in Fremont after leaving a local area restaurant. His vehicle jumped the curb around the Stevenson Boulevard neighborhood, zoomed up a small hill, and then crashed directly into a police cruiser that had been set up at the DUI checkpoint.
No injuries were reported, including no injuries to the driver that was obviously inebriated, though witnesses did say that the driver just narrowly missed plowing into several of the officers that had been working that DUI checkpoint.
Interestingly enough, police officers later said that the suspect that has been arrested and cited with driving under the influence was also a person of interest for another suspected DUI crash that occurred just a week prior out in Union City.
For the most part however, DUI checkpoints are doing a great job at persuading the community members and visitors to the Bay Area to give up any ideas of driving while intoxicated. Hopefully these instances will continue to dwindle downwards, and maybe one day folks won’t have to worry about drunk drivers sharing the road with more responsible individuals.