Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
The California Office of Traffic Safety issues yearly grants to police departments to fund DUI and Driver’s License checkpoints. File photo of a checkpoint in Menlo Park by Arden Margulis.

Atherton police cited 12 people for driving without valid licenses at a DUI checkpoint Aug. 22 and are searching for a driver suspected of being under the influence of alcohol who fled.

The checkpoint was held from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the intersection of Middlefield and Marsh roads, where officers screened 455 drivers, police said.

The Atherton Police Department said the suspected impaired driver has not been located.

“Impaired drivers put others on the road at significant risk,” Cmdr. Dan Larsen said in a press release. “Any prevention measures that reduce the number of impaired drivers on our roads significantly improve traffic safety.”

The checkpoint was funded by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Most Popular

Arden Margulis is a reporter for The Almanac, covering Menlo Park and Atherton. He first joined the newsroom in May 2024 as an intern. His reporting on the Las Lomitas School District won first place coverage...

Join the Conversation

2 Comments

  1. I’m all for cost-effective enforcement measures. Sobriety check-point statistics indicate that they are definitely not that.

    While typically funded with grants, sobriety check-points cost huge amounts of expensive police overtime for maybe a half dozen officers and typically only yield 0, 1, or rarely maybe even 2 impaired drivers out of many hundreds “screened”. This is less than the same number of officers can catch when keeping a sharp eye for impaired driving while out on routine patrol and without the innocent driver-delaying safety theater for the same 8+ hours of overtime.

  2. 100% agree. The hysteria around MADD – and “D.U.I.’s is crazy, especially compared to the leniency shown for other crimes. People are being gunned down in schools and shopping centers – every week – and people just shrug their shoulders. But if someone is .02% “over the limit”; we throw the book at them!

Leave a comment
This is the Comment policy text in the settings.