Sobriety Checkpoints

We were walking down a remote side street in Göteborg this afternoon, near the Avenyn, when we came across a small cluster of cops standing in the road.

Here’s an unsuspecting motorist turning down the street.



We watched for a while and it became clear they were waiting to stop the few cars that happened to travel down that isolated street.

It was a typical Swedish sobriety checkpoint. I’d heard about them many times but hadn’t encountered one in my first four months here.



Such DUI stops are astonishingly common here. So common that Swedish police executed more than 2.5 MILLION breath tests in 2009.

I just can’t wrap my head around that number, for a few reasons. Since I’m killing time in the hotel while we wait to hear if my parents’ flight is going to get off the ground from Brussels tonight, I decided to reference some tables and charts on the Statistics Sweden website to help me explain how mind-boggling that figure is.

As of last New Year’s Eve, Sweden’s population was 9,340,682. That’s 2.5 million breath tests in a country with fewer than 10 million people.

Then you’ve got to remember than the driving age is 18 and there are about 2 million kids too young to be on the roads. Very few people over age 80 are driving around either, so let’s also subtract that half-a-million.

The number is even more astounding when you consider that an estimated 85 percent of the population lives in urban areas, and the other 1.5 to 2 million people live in the large cities like Stockholm and Göteborg. Very few of those people even own cars due to the efficient public transportation systems.

If you accept those calculations, that probably means 1 in every 2 drivers were stopped and breathalyzed in 2009. Obviously some didn’t encounter a single checkpoint and others were tested multiple times last year but on average, that’s 1 in 2.

So how is that possible? How can Swedish police legally issue breath tests to that many people?

Swedes scoff at the constitutional protections California’s drivers are afforded. In the Golden State, landmark Supreme Court cases have created major burdens for police to conduct legal DUI checkpoints. These requirements include:

• The checkpoint should be located on a major thoroughfare (streets with a high concentration of DUI arrests or accidents)
• Checkpoints must be advertised in media outlets at least one week in advance
• Checkpoints must be identified by signs or lights so they are obvious to approaching vehicles
• There MUST be a marked route to circumvent a checkpoint, and drivers must commit a moving violation or show obvious signs of impairment to be pulled over for taking such a route around a checkpoint
• For drivers who are stopped at a checkpoint, police must establish probable cause that they are intoxicated in order to conduct breath or other field sobriety tests
  

Those are some high hurdles for California’s cops. Swedish law enforcement officers face none of those restrictions.

The thing that struck me most about the checkpoint in Göteborg today wasn’t that it was unadvertised, unmarked or that it was located on a side street with little traffic. It wasn’t even that every driver was tested. It was that police were conducting it at 2 p.m. On a Sunday. Not a Friday or Saturday night or a holiday weekend.



I asked my girlfriend why and was shocked to hear the police were likely targeting drivers who may have imbibed too much last night. They may have made the right decision not to get behind the wheel last night, but if they still had even minor traces of alcohol in their system some 12 hours later, the police were there to arrest them.

Sweden lowered the blood-alcohol limit from .05 to .02 in 1990 — four times lower than California and most other states. I read on a lawyer’s blog recently that his local police department approximates that a 180-pound man can drink six beers or five mixed drinks in two hours before reaching the .08 threshold.

Pretty incredible, then, to think that a BAL of .10 or higher in Sweden is deemed “aggravated drunk driving” and first-time offenders are usually sentenced to two years in prison. That’s only a drink or two more than what a driver can legally consume in California. No wonder the Golden State has more than twice as many alcohol-involved fatalities as Sweden.

Observing the checkpoint this afternoon really got me thinking. We’re so concerned with the government violating our constitutional rights in California, but is guaranteeing these extreme protections coming at the cost of avoidable DUI deaths?

I don’t completely agree with Sweden’s drunk driving prevention measures, but there’s got to be a middle ground between this and the way things are enforced in California that can still save lives, right?

'System' Failure?

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon and you’re lounging on your couch. You get a call from a friend inviting you to a spur-of-the-moment dinner party. Great, you think. You didn’t have anything fun to do and you start looking forward to an evening of good food and great company.

Your friend phoned at 2:15, so you’ve got plenty of time to get ready. Except that you live in Sweden, and in a situation that would dictate you to bring a nice bottle of wine you’re probably going to show up at your friend’s house empty-handed. How rude.

See, for more than a half-century all alcohol in Sweden stronger than 3.5 percent has been sold only at restaurants and bars and through the government-run liquor monopoly called Systembolaget (“The System Company”).



In California, you can buy any alcohol you want in virtually any grocery store. You can buy it between 6 a.m. and 2 a.m. The beer is chilled in-store and is always cold when you buy it. Alcohol is inexpensive and can be even cheaper if you buy in larger quantities like 12-packs or cases.

Sweden couldn’t be much more restrictive without banning booze altogether.

The strongest beer sold in grocery stores is labeled Class II and called folköl, “people’s beer.” An even weaker Class I beer can be of maximum 2.25 percent strength and is called lättöl (“light beer”).

Class III beer, starköl ("strong beer"), is everything stronger than 3.5 percent and is only sold at Systembolaget. Wines and spirits, which are obviously all stronger than 3.5 percent, are only sold at The System.

Buying alcohol at Systembolaget is a much different experience than shopping for drinks in a store back home. No beer is refrigerated. All items are sold as individual cans or bottles and there is no discount for buying a case of beer. No brand can be favored over any other, so there are never sales or specials.

The hours are absurdly limited. Systembolaget locations are closed on Sundays and holidays. They’re only open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and close at 6 p.m. on Fridays. The latest they’re open all week is 7 p.m. on Thursdays.



Alcohol is taxed on strength rather than price, with different tables corresponding to beer, wine and liquor. It’s all heavily taxed, though.

The cheapest can of beer (the same size as a 12-ounce can of Coors Light, for instance) costs between 9 and 10 Swedish kronor after tax. At the current exchange rate, that’s between $1.31 and $1.46 USD per can.

Hard liquor is ridiculously expensive. To buy a bottle of Jägermeister and a bottle of Bacardi Apple rum (which are also only 700 mL bottles rather than the 750 mL fifths sold in the States) would cost 494 SEK, or about $72 USD.





If you found both on sale at a grocery chain in California, it’d probably run about $20-$25 for the same two bottles.

The Swedish government maintains that keeping the monopoly in place has kept alcohol out of minors’ hands and discouraged binge drinking among adults. You must be at least 20 years old to buy alcohol at Systembolaget, which runs national television ads urging its patrons to imbibe responsibly.

As much as I bag on The System as an annoying, outdated concept, I have found one silver lining. Since the government imports wine from across Europe and the rest of the world in such large quantities, those savings are passed on to Swedes in spite of the high taxes.

The System set a new record in 2009 by selling more than 170 million liters of wine, and the four-liter boxes introduced in the late 1990s are largely to thank. The boxed wine isn’t the Franzia crap sold in the States, either. Quality stuff at a reasonable price.



Systembolaget causes a lot of frustration, especially for new expatriates. I don’t think it works the way the government would like everyone to believe it does, but there’s no alternative. You get used to it. You memorize the hours and you learn to plan ahead. You join the masses who tote the signature purple bags around town on Friday afternoons, when going to The System is literally a social event.





I’ve learned my lesson. Always stash away a couple extra bottles of wine when you’re in Sweden. You never know when you might need them.