The San Francisco Police Department wants to make sure your weekend booze bender doesn't turn into a fender-bender -- or worse.
Take BART, Muni, or a taxi tonight or grab a sober driver, because police will be looking for drunk drivers at a sobriety checkpoint somewhere within city limits between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Specifically, cops will be on the lookout for signs of drug and alcohol impairment and to make sure you even have a driver's license.
The reason? Recent statistics reveal that nearly one-third of of drivers in fatal crashes had one or more drugs in their system, and more tested positive for drugs than did for alcohol. Of the drugs, marijuana was the most prevalent, just slightly more than alcohol, according to the SFPD.
DUI checkpoints can reduce the number of people killed and injured in alcohol or drug-involved crashes by up to 20 percent when well-publicized DUI checkpoints and proactive DUI patrols are conducted routinely, according to researchers.
Checkpoints also save $6 for every $1 spent, according to police, and nearly 90 percent of California drivers approve of DUI checkpoints. That's probably because a DUI can include jail time, fines, fees, boring classes, other expenses that can exceed $10,000.
Collision statistics and frequency of DUI arrests are the deciding factor in checkpoint placement locations.
"In 2013, San Francisco had one traffic fatality related to a DUI driver," said Officer Gordon Shyy, "There were 56 felony DUI arrests during the same time period."
Also, in California, 802 people died in 2012 in alcohol-related collisions. Nationwide, nearly 10,000 others were killed by an impaired driver.
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