Remember that if you encounter a DUI checkpoint in the Fort Lauderdale area this holiday season, you can turn around, even if you just want to avoid waiting in the long line of cars at the roadblock.
http://www.floridaduilawyerblog.com/2008/12/dui_checkpoints_in_florida.html
Interesting article. I suppose that where I live (NYC) that when you turn around at a road block, the police do not go after you for avoiding the road block, but for making an illegal u-turn.
However, most of the road blocks I have been stopped at in Queens or Brooklyn have been set up in areas where you can not see them prior to the last point in which you can turn around, legally or not. And I’m not sure if the NYPD has to do the same as the Ft Lauderdale police with respect to notifying the public.
Unfortunately for me, I used to have to be at work by 5am; the bars close at 4am in NYC. I’ve been caught at check points at the end of the Queensboro and Pulaski bridges. No place to turn around. Since I wasn’t drunk, they would look for other things.
Once they asked me for my license and registration then tried to give me a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt in my 1975 Dodge van. I told them I was wearing it until I had to get out of my seat to reach the glove box. He said he watched me the entire time and I wasn’t wearing it. Things escalated when I asked him if he had xray vision. It took his sergeant to explain to him that cars that old only have lap belts.
Another time I didn’t have my registration in my glove box, just my insurance. The little registration card has all the same information as the registration decal on the windshield, but he decided to write me a ticket anyway. I asked why he couldn’t just use the info glued to the windshield to check for whatever it is that they check for. He said I could have forged it. I told him that when I forge registration stickers, I never forget to forge the registration card for the glovebox. I’m not very good at getting out of tickets.