A few months ago an acquaintance of mine needed to go to the grocery store. He was drunk so he decided to ride his bike (it was too far to walk, and he didn’t want to drive because he was inebriated).
I was reading recently about people being charged with DUI for riding a bicycle while drunk. is this a common thing or is that one of those charges that only happens a few dozen times a year? It seems pretty damn stupid to equate the crime of riding a bicycle with driving a 2 ton car under the influence.
How often does this charge come up, does it carry the same penalties as driving a car?
Arresting bicyclists for DUI’s, or running stop signs and red lights, or driving dangerously AND over the speed limit in residential neighborhoods (easy to do with a newer high end bike) should happen constantly in Portland and never does. Also add parents who precariously balance infants on the front handlebars. I actually kept track one Saturday of how many bicyclists stopped at stop signs and red lights in a popular bicycle neighborhood as I drove around all day. Not ONE did out of many dozens. Not even one. Sorry, but bicyclists here cause dangerous situations daily, hourly, and minute by minute on a constant basis everywhere around here. This isn’t funny or cute. It costs lives. This behavior needs to stop, and handing out tickets would be a good way to start.
It depends on where you live. I’ve actually seen cops on bicycles make such an arrest and I was glad to see it happen. This was in Newport Beach, CA just last summer. The numbnut who got arrested was being a menace and endangering himself and others.
What got him noticed was that he swerved into traffic and caused cars to jam on the brakes and swerve to miss him. He was lucky he didn’t get himself or someone else killed. A bicycle isn’t the same kind of weapon as a car, but some drunk on one can get you killed just as dead.
The dramas of life one can observe from a bench at the beach…
My daughter and I toured UC Davis. Davis Ca is one of the most bike friendly cities in the U.S.
Our guide mentioned that the Davis police were known to give out BUI tickets and if a student was going to party they would be better off to call the tipsy taxi.
In his book Maximum Life Span, gerontologist Roy Walford related his own views from the bench on the beach in Santa Monica, California in the early 1980s. It was popular for young people to roller-skate backwards down the sidewalk while holding their boom boxes on their shoulders. Collisions between skaters were commonplace, and nine times out of ten it only amounted to a fun fall if no damage to the boom boxes occurred. But several old people were killed by being richocheted off these twerps, who were deaf to their screams. So the oldsters retaliated by randomly throwing up barricades across the sidewalks and watching with vindicatory satisfaction as the skaters splatted into those instead.
I read an article once – I think it was in San Jose or one of the cities in that area – of a guy who got a DUI for walking his bike.
He rode his bike to a bar, had a few, and then decided he shouldn’t ride his bike home. So he walked his bike. I guess he must have attracted the attention of a cop somehow. He got a DUI ticket on the theory that even by walking his bike, he was “operating” it, and the judge upheld the ticket too.
I think there was also something mentioned that the mere fact that he made the decision to walk his bike while drunk was grounds for a DUI charge – even though he made the correct decision (i.e., not to ride), the mere fact that he was drunk made him “incompetent” to make that decision one way or the other.
So apparently if you drink a few in the comfort of your own living room, and then decide to stay home and not drive anywhere, you are still guilty of DUI simply for having made a decision to drive or not drive, while inebriated.
Depends on the state. In some states a bicycle is not considered a motor vehicle (unless equipped with a motor/engine) and the DUI statutes specifically require a motor vehicle in some states.
in some states you can get a DUI for sleeping in a car if you have the car keys in your pocket and you are drunk. They consider anyone with keys to still be in control of the car . Car does not have to be running.
A cop friend of mine here in New York told me if you want to sleep it off in the car you should take the keys out of the ignition, and get out of the driver’s seat. So, I guess the passenger’s seat and back seat are okay.
My ex-husband was riding his bike home, blind drunk. He was riding on the bike path, and a raccoon ran in front of him. He braked hard and went over the handle bars, shattering his ankle. He called 911 from his cell phone, and the ambulance and cops arrived. The cops told him he was lucky he wasn’t on a main road, or they would have given him a BWI. They confiscated his bike though, and he never got it back. It would have been his 9th DWI!
There’s also the fact that in at least some states, merely being in possession of your keys and inside the car amounts to DUI. So if you’re too drunk to drive & decide to sleep it off in your car in the bar parking lot you’re still at risk of arrest. Realistically the risk is pretty low, but not zero.
It all turns on the question of what constitutes a “vehicle” and what constitutes “operate”. Which words mean whatever the local statutes as interpreted by the local judges say they do.
This is the exact thing that gets people NUTS! All it takes is a handful of zealots to make life miserable for people who are trying to do the right thing (eg- sleeping off his drunk WITHOUT driving the car). I’ve heard of claims of charges against “drunk-walking”.
In a similar vein, while I favor seatbelt laws in principle, I do recall all the promises that “seatbelt laws will only be enforced on people violating other traffic laws”. Next thing, you hear about a mom in Texas hauled off to jail after being pulled over for a seatbelt violation. Now seatbelt laws as a primary violation seems to be the law of the land everywhere I go. Again, I’m not saying that there should not be seatbelt laws- just another example of creeping regulation.
Yeah. Canadians were also fed the line “Seatbelt laws will only be enforced when you’re pulled over for something else.” Twenty years later they have fake squeegee kids looking into cars and radio ahead to tell their colleagues which cars to pull over. (Some real squeegee kid complained to the papers that the cops ran him off his regular corner to pull this…)
Being inside the vehicle with the keys being sufficient to claim DUI? Why not? It avoids the hair splitting - I was not in the driver’s seat, I hadn’t started the car, I was on private property, I had no intent to drive, I just started it to keep warm, I was just listening to the radio… simple rule - you have the keys there, you could drive any time.
IIRC, the law in Canada is “vehicle”, motor not necessary. So that would mean buggy, bike, whatever. The law governing boats, and the law governing aircraft, are dealt with separately but are equally strict.
I remember reading about an NHL hockey player in Minnesota who was pulled over for alleged drunk boating. What got me about the story was that he was not intoxicated, so they asked about drugs, and when he mentioned prescription drugs they demanded a blood test. I was amazed that parks patrol or rangers or whatever they were had the authority to demand a blood test without obvious demonstration of a problem - let alone draw blood, something I assume a medical professional should have to do. Of course, a black guy with an expensive boat in lily-white rural Minnesota probably had nothing to do with this…