US Senators ask Apple to pull DUI checkpoint apps

Where I live it's customary for the police to announce the locations of DUI checkpoints on days that people are especially likely to be drinking and driving (e.g. New Year's Eve). For awhile I didn't understand why they would do this (and I know a lot of people who still don't get it).

If your goal is to catch people driving drunk, then no, it doesn't make sense to announce the locations of DUI checkpoints. If however your goal is to prevent people from driving drunk in the first place, it might make sense to announce checkpoints at a number of locations throughout the city. If the potential drunk driver knows he can't go too many places without passing though a checkpoint he may decide to just stay home.

While I certainly don't condone driving while impaired - I feel like the government trying to outright ban legal technologies that allow citizens to avoid government authority sets a dangerous precedent.

this technology should not be promoted to your customers--in fact, it shouldn't even be available.

It shouldn't even be available? That sounds sketchy to me. I know slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but if this line of reasoning holds, couldn't you say the same thing about encryption? It enables people who wish to engage in illegal activities to avoid government authority and thus, shouldn't even be available? Scary.

I believe it serves several purposes:

1. It hops to discourage people from drinking and driving in the first place by planting the idea that there will be checkpoints. The best time to avoid DUIs is before the driver starts drinking. Ideally, they'll make alternative arrangements to get home from wherever it is they're going rather than taking the car and figuring it out after;

2. To enable those capable of driving to avoid the checkpoints. The premise for this is that those who are drinking and driving either are capable of making this kind of rational forethought or they're not and the police are largely interested in catches those that aren't; and

3. Possibly to divert those that are borderline cases from driving through areas where they might cause the most damage if something does go wrong.

I know people like to see speed traps and DUI checkpoints as cynical revenue-raising initiatives but you'd be surprised to learn that some people just don't want others to act irresponsibly by driving several tons of metal at high speed while impaired, possibly harming or killing themselves or others.

It used to be that Danish police would tell the radio stations where they would conduct station people with radar guns to check for people driving too fast.

Since the goal was to prevent speeding, it didn't matter if they slowed down because they wanted to avoid a ticket so long as they slowed down.

These days they don't do so anymore because it is a nice way to pad government coffers, but it would be nice to build such an app.