WASHINGTON -- Drawing yet another distinction in the complex law of privacy on the highways, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday upheld the arrest of a drunken driver who was apprehended at a police checkpoint designed to seek information from motorists about a week-old hit-and-run accident.

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By a 6-3 vote, the court held that police in Lombard, Ill., did not violate the constitutional rights of Robert Lidster, whose minivan swerved near a roadblock, by subjecting him to a sobriety test and then arresting him.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said the checkpoint did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures."

"The relevant public concern was grave," Breyer wrote. "Police were investigating a crime that had resulted in a human death. No one denies the police's need to obtain more information at that time. And the stop's objective was to help find the perpetrator of a specific and known crime, not of unknown crimes of a general sort. The stop advanced this grave public concern to a significant degree."

A week before Lidster was stopped, a 70-year-old cyclist was killed in the same area by a hit-and-run driver. Police set up a checkpoint to hand drivers a flyer reading: "ALERT ... FATAL HIT & RUN ACCIDENT" and to solicit assistance in locating the driver.

At first glance, yesterday's ruling seemed to conflict with a 2000 ruling in which the court struck down a checkpoint set up by police in Indianapolis to interdict illegal drugs. But Breyer said the issue in the Indianapolis case was that the checkpoint was intended to uncover criminal activity by motorists, and that in the absence of "individualized suspicion," such searches violated the Fourth Amendment.

By contrast, Breyer said, the checkpoint that snared Robert Lidster "was not to determine whether a vehicle's occupants were committing a crime, but to ask [the] vehicle's occupants, as members of the public, for their help in providing information about a crime in all likelihood committed by others."

In a partial dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed that the two kinds of checkpoints required a different constitutional analysis. But Stevens rejected Breyer's finding that the checkpoint was reasonable.

"In contrast to pedestrians, who are free to keep walking when they encounter police officers handing out flyers or seeking information, motorists who confront a roadblock are required to stop and to remain stopped for as long as the officers choose to detain them," Stevens wrote.