Back when I was cab driver, I picked up a lot of drunk people from the DUI checkpoint. I usually avoided the bar areas but for some reason I did get a sadistic pleasure out of picking people up from the DUI checkpoints.
Here is how it would work. In the Phoenix area at the DUI checkpoints they have everything, mobile labs do do blood work and everything else. By the time these peopel are released they have been run through the coals. Their lives are now totally screwed up for the next several years.
To see how screwed you can get for even a first offense DUI in Arizona click here
One night while I was driving my taxi I was dispatched to pick up a drunk at a bar. I hated bars. I can't really explain why but I did. I guess it was how the bartender would carelessly get a person so drunk they couldn't even function and then pass them off to the cab driver. Anyways, when I walked in I reported to the bartender who pointed down to a elderly man. I walked up to him and announced that I was the cab driver.
He loudly refused. He claimed that he did not need any taxi and told me to get lost. So I did. I later found out that the bartender had allowed this obvious drunk to drive home, a danger to himself and everyone else on the road. Bartenders can have total disregard for sentient life sometimes.
Well at 3am it was time to pick people up from the DUI check point and guess which customer I got? The guy from the bar. Instead of paying 10 dollars for a cab ride, he now gets to pay a several thousand dollar fine, have a breathalizer on his car, and pay a monthly fee for that service, and spend some time in jail. I enjoyed the entire ride as he cried and wailed about his plight.
I guess the reason I enjoyed the DUI checkpoints is because it gets drunks off the streets. The police obviously don't catch everyone, but the ones they do catch they make examples out of them. Every ride is the same, each customer whines about how much this is going to cost them and is totally oblivious to how many people they could have killed had the police not stopped them.
To everyone who has ever gotten a DUI ticket, I am happy. For every person who has had their lives ruined due to a DUI ticket it makes me even more happy.
