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About not killing someone if you ride after drinking, Obviously it is ver difficult for a bike to directly kill someone other than the rider (as opposed to a ca

by fipar 4y ago

About not killing someone if you ride after drinking, Obviously it is ver difficult for a bike to directly kill someone other than the rider (as opposed to a car, where this is very easy), but a drunk cyclist can still hurt other people directly or indirectly (causing a bigger accident by forcing someone to avoid them). Even on a city free of private cars, you’d still share the road with pedestrians, other cyclists, and public transportation. And even if you really don’t hurt someone else, it’s terribly hard on a bus driver if they kill someone, even when it wasn’t their fault (my wife saw this first hand when someone committed suicide by throwing themselves under a bus). So no, if you drink, just walk, take public transportation, or get someone else to take you home, but don’t ride a bike. (edit: typos)

Fricken 4y ago
The risks you're concerned about are not statistically relevant.
- mecsred 4y ago
  Cool thanks for letting me know. Time to down a 40 and start doing wheelies through high traffic crosswalks.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    Safer than doing the same with burnouts in a parking lot.
jerrre 4y ago
Don't most of you points also apply to drunk walking?
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  The damage is a function of mass and speed. Obviously walking < e-bike << car
  - alkjsdlkjasd 4y ago
    To quickly do the calculations: Walking: 5 km/h * 70kg = 97 kgm/s e-bike: 20 km/h * 90 kg = 500 kgm/s car: 50 km/h * 2000kg = 28,000 kgm/s
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      This is awesome, thank you (and ditto for this whole chain of replies).
    - swexbe 4y ago
      Wouldn’t joules be more indicative of damage caused?
      - yakubin 4y ago
        Just as there is the law of conservation of energy, there is also the law of conservation of momentum. Both explain it equally well IMO.
        p1mrx 4y ago
        How can mv and mv² explain the damage "equally well", when one is linear and the other is quadratic with respect to velocity?
        mynameisvlad 4y ago
        The point is the extreme magnitude of difference between a car and a bike/person. This shows it just fine.
        wiredfool 4y ago
bowsamic 4y ago
It's also very illegal to bike when drunk where I live in Germany
- pastage 4y ago
  Not in Sweden and we have less accidents than Germany.
  - timc3 4y ago
    You are not allowed to be driving anything while drunk in Sweden.
  - null_object 4y ago
    > Not in Sweden and we have less accidents than Germany. I don't think you got the memo where everyone seems to think getting blind drunk and then getting on an electric scooter is totally ok "in Sweden". I've had a few near-misses myself with crazy drunk riders on pedestrian streets in central Stockholm; I once interviewed a job-candidate with a cut-up face who laughingly told us he'd crashed a scooter with two(!) friends on the back after a drink night; a friend of mine smashed their hip after a night drinking and then jumping on a scooter. The rules may be there. The actual reality is different.
    - pastage 4y ago
      You can not be convicted for drunk cycling, but you can still be stopped for recklesness in traffic. Same goes for e-scooters. As long as you do not cause problems there is no legal or social taboo.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Correction: it's illegal to bike when very drunk. In the moderately drunk range, German law is surprisingly reasonable in acknowledging that drunk driving would have been much worse.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
jefc1111 4y ago
I am on board with this. You can do someone a serious injury while cycling. Also, you might kill yourself by drunk cycling. And that is likely to have a huge effect on lots of people you care about. It's just a bad idea all round...
- mjhay 4y ago
  It's a bad idea, but orders of magnitude less of a bad idea than drunk driving. People ditching cars means less drunk driving (even if it means more drunk cycling), as well as less road deaths in general. That can only be a good thing.
- adam-a 4y ago
  If you kill yourself while cycling then you were almost certainly hit by a car, which is probably more likely if you are drunk cycling. But this is also the fault of bad cycling infrastructure and arguably the driver who cannot avoid another road user.
- Mashimo 4y ago
  > It's just a bad idea all round... Drinking alone is a bad idea all around.
  - jefc1111 4y ago
    Yes, better not to drink alone if at all possible.
toss1 4y ago
Nice suggestion, but drunk-cycling is self-limiting in a way that drunk-cycling is not. Drunk-driving you are seated, and only need to be barely conscious. for drunk-cycling, you still must be sufficiently functional to balance on a bike, which puts a bit of a floor on the level of perceptual and cognitive function available, in addition to the far lower bike vs car ceiling on available momentum to do damage. Not recommended, but cycling is a very substantially less-worse choice, absent getting another ride.
- rkangel 4y ago
  I think "self-limiting" is a key point here. People who are moderately drunk are not very dangerous, and people who are very drunk are just not capable of cycling - it requires a certain degree of coordination.
- otherme123 4y ago
  True, I remember watching a guy "cycling" drunk, and he was just walking with a bike between his legs.
- trgn 4y ago
  > which puts a bit of a floor on the level of perceptual and cognitive function available Absolutely. I cannot believe people are actually equivocating on this. A drunk driver is hundreds of times more dangerous than a drunk cyclist, it's a categorical difference.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  That's correct. Drunk drivers are frequently completely unconscious by the time they crash a car, and can have been for quite a distance down the road. Can't happen on a bike.
  - inpdx 4y ago
    One could envision that last beer or shot not having taken full hold when the cyclist gets on the bike. One could also envision balance being sufficient but reaction time not. Have I crashed my bike at the bottom of a hill while drunk? Yes, yes I have.
wdb 4y ago
You can hit a pedestrian
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  However, there's a good incentive to not hit pedestrians. In collisions with pedestrians, cyclists often get more injured and surprisingly, pedestrians are more likely to be to blame for the collision (e.g. stepping into a road or cycle lane without looking).
acomjean 4y ago
Don't drink and ride. We a friend do this, they didn't hurt anyone but themselves, and not too badly. And they did hit their head when they fell off , but were wearing a helmet (thus becoming a advocate for helmets..). Still pretty scraped up.
stcroixx 4y ago
Pretty sure it’s illegal to operate any kind of vehicle on a public street while over the limit in the US. No different than a car. Except, if you get in a wreck you’re almost surely dead.
Zigurd 4y ago
I once had an office in an only somewhat renovated area of mill buildings in an old mill town in New England. One building always had a number of down at the heels looking bicycles parked outside. Eventually I found out it was an addiction rehab. There was no public transport in the area. I'd rather have them getting to rehab on a bike than not going at all.
lenlorijn 4y ago
I see lots of folks in the comments assuming what would happen when you bike drunk, seemingly not ever having done so themselves or seen it. I live in a student city in the Netherlands (Groningen), where most students go out on the town by bike. It's really not much more dangerous than walking drunk. And it's very much preferable to driving drunk. Thousands of students park their bikes in the city's central underground bike parking spots every weekend. I have never heard of someone dying because biking drunk. The biggest danger for any bike, drunk or not, remains the car. This is also reflected in the enforcement of laws by the police. Although driving drunk, and being drunk in public is not allowed, fining cyclists for this is rarely enforced. Partially because the consequences are not too bad, and partially to make sure people don't drive home drunk instead to avoid a fine. According to the Dutch central bureau of statistics in 2021, out of all deaths of cyclists 34% are due to losing consciousness, getting a foot stuck in the wheels, making a wrong movement, or due to bad road conditions and slipperiness. Out of this 34%, 72 % is over the age of 70. https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/37/meer-fietsdoden-na-eenzijdige-ongevallen https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/37/meer-fietsdoden-na-e...
- altacc 4y ago
  I once heard somebody describe cycling after a few drinks as the closest thing humans can get to flying.
- tfourb 4y ago
  A friend of mine in college drove down a (very) long flight of stairs with his bike while being (very) drunk. He was severely injured and I very much doubt based on his recollection of what happened that he would a) have injured himself at all if he was on foot and b) even if he had fell on those stairs, he would have had much less serious injuries.
  - treve 4y ago
    Sure, but you are comparing statistics for an entire country to a specific incident. Of course there's a non-0 risk, but when it's about traffic and safety it's about acceptable, not complete elimination of risk. It's still illegal in the Netherlands to bike drunk. I'm sure this would be aggressively enforced in cities like Groningen if statistically there were major safety issues Thursdays and Friday nights with drunk cyclists, but this is not the case. Not to say that your friend shouldn't have walked instead though. Drunkness is also a sliding scale. Luckily with cyclists the chances are way lower of murdering others.
Mashimo 4y ago
> but don’t ride a bike. I'm drunk biking and thought about if I should stop. But I have never hear about anyone having an accident related to drunk biking. In theory I could run head first into oncoming biker. But I never felt being that drunk in a way that would lose control. That would also make it illegal where I live.

by fipar 4y ago

Fricken 4y ago

The risks you're concerned about are not statistically relevant.

mecsred 4y ago
Cool thanks for letting me know. Time to down a 40 and start doing wheelies through high traffic crosswalks.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  Safer than doing the same with burnouts in a parking lot.

jerrre 4y ago

Don't most of you points also apply to drunk walking?

nonethewiser 4y ago
The damage is a function of mass and speed. Obviously walking < e-bike << car
- alkjsdlkjasd 4y ago
  To quickly do the calculations: Walking: 5 km/h * 70kg = 97 kgm/s e-bike: 20 km/h * 90 kg = 500 kgm/s car: 50 km/h * 2000kg = 28,000 kgm/s
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    This is awesome, thank you (and ditto for this whole chain of replies).
  - swexbe 4y ago
    Wouldn’t joules be more indicative of damage caused?
    - yakubin 4y ago
      Just as there is the law of conservation of energy, there is also the law of conservation of momentum. Both explain it equally well IMO.
      - p1mrx 4y ago
        How can mv and mv² explain the damage "equally well", when one is linear and the other is quadratic with respect to velocity?
        mynameisvlad 4y ago
        The point is the extreme magnitude of difference between a car and a bike/person. This shows it just fine.
        wiredfool 4y ago

bowsamic 4y ago

It's also very illegal to bike when drunk where I live in Germany

pastage 4y ago
Not in Sweden and we have less accidents than Germany.
- timc3 4y ago
  You are not allowed to be driving anything while drunk in Sweden.
- null_object 4y ago
  > Not in Sweden and we have less accidents than Germany. I don't think you got the memo where everyone seems to think getting blind drunk and then getting on an electric scooter is totally ok "in Sweden". I've had a few near-misses myself with crazy drunk riders on pedestrian streets in central Stockholm; I once interviewed a job-candidate with a cut-up face who laughingly told us he'd crashed a scooter with two(!) friends on the back after a drink night; a friend of mine smashed their hip after a night drinking and then jumping on a scooter. The rules may be there. The actual reality is different.
  - pastage 4y ago
    You can not be convicted for drunk cycling, but you can still be stopped for recklesness in traffic. Same goes for e-scooters. As long as you do not cause problems there is no legal or social taboo.
usrusr 4y ago
Correction: it's illegal to bike when very drunk. In the moderately drunk range, German law is surprisingly reasonable in acknowledging that drunk driving would have been much worse.
- bowsamic 4y ago

jefc1111 4y ago

I am on board with this. You can do someone a serious injury while cycling. Also, you might kill yourself by drunk cycling. And that is likely to have a huge effect on lots of people you care about. It's just a bad idea all round...

mjhay 4y ago
It's a bad idea, but orders of magnitude less of a bad idea than drunk driving. People ditching cars means less drunk driving (even if it means more drunk cycling), as well as less road deaths in general. That can only be a good thing.
adam-a 4y ago
If you kill yourself while cycling then you were almost certainly hit by a car, which is probably more likely if you are drunk cycling. But this is also the fault of bad cycling infrastructure and arguably the driver who cannot avoid another road user.
Mashimo 4y ago
> It's just a bad idea all round... Drinking alone is a bad idea all around.
- jefc1111 4y ago
  Yes, better not to drink alone if at all possible.

toss1 4y ago

Nice suggestion, but drunk-cycling is self-limiting in a way that drunk-cycling is not. Drunk-driving you are seated, and only need to be barely conscious. for drunk-cycling, you still must be sufficiently functional to balance on a bike, which puts a bit of a floor on the level of perceptual and cognitive function available, in addition to the far lower bike vs car ceiling on available momentum to do damage. Not recommended, but cycling is a very substantially less-worse choice, absent getting another ride.

rkangel 4y ago
I think "self-limiting" is a key point here. People who are moderately drunk are not very dangerous, and people who are very drunk are just not capable of cycling - it requires a certain degree of coordination.
otherme123 4y ago
True, I remember watching a guy "cycling" drunk, and he was just walking with a bike between his legs.
trgn 4y ago
> which puts a bit of a floor on the level of perceptual and cognitive function available Absolutely. I cannot believe people are actually equivocating on this. A drunk driver is hundreds of times more dangerous than a drunk cyclist, it's a categorical difference.
Zigurd 4y ago
That's correct. Drunk drivers are frequently completely unconscious by the time they crash a car, and can have been for quite a distance down the road. Can't happen on a bike.
- inpdx 4y ago
  One could envision that last beer or shot not having taken full hold when the cyclist gets on the bike. One could also envision balance being sufficient but reaction time not. Have I crashed my bike at the bottom of a hill while drunk? Yes, yes I have.

wdb 4y ago

You can hit a pedestrian

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
However, there's a good incentive to not hit pedestrians. In collisions with pedestrians, cyclists often get more injured and surprisingly, pedestrians are more likely to be to blame for the collision (e.g. stepping into a road or cycle lane without looking).

acomjean 4y ago

Don't drink and ride. We a friend do this, they didn't hurt anyone but themselves, and not too badly. And they did hit their head when they fell off , but were wearing a helmet (thus becoming a advocate for helmets..). Still pretty scraped up.

stcroixx 4y ago

Pretty sure it’s illegal to operate any kind of vehicle on a public street while over the limit in the US. No different than a car. Except, if you get in a wreck you’re almost surely dead.

Zigurd 4y ago

I once had an office in an only somewhat renovated area of mill buildings in an old mill town in New England. One building always had a number of down at the heels looking bicycles parked outside. Eventually I found out it was an addiction rehab. There was no public transport in the area. I'd rather have them getting to rehab on a bike than not going at all.

lenlorijn 4y ago

I see lots of folks in the comments assuming what would happen when you bike drunk, seemingly not ever having done so themselves or seen it. I live in a student city in the Netherlands (Groningen), where most students go out on the town by bike. It's really not much more dangerous than walking drunk. And it's very much preferable to driving drunk. Thousands of students park their bikes in the city's central underground bike parking spots every weekend. I have never heard of someone dying because biking drunk. The biggest danger for any bike, drunk or not, remains the car. This is also reflected in the enforcement of laws by the police. Although driving drunk, and being drunk in public is not allowed, fining cyclists for this is rarely enforced. Partially because the consequences are not too bad, and partially to make sure people don't drive home drunk instead to avoid a fine. According to the Dutch central bureau of statistics in 2021, out of all deaths of cyclists 34% are due to losing consciousness, getting a foot stuck in the wheels, making a wrong movement, or due to bad road conditions and slipperiness. Out of this 34%, 72 % is over the age of 70. https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/37/meer-fietsdoden-na-eenzijdige-ongevallen https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/37/meer-fietsdoden-na-e...

altacc 4y ago
I once heard somebody describe cycling after a few drinks as the closest thing humans can get to flying.
tfourb 4y ago
A friend of mine in college drove down a (very) long flight of stairs with his bike while being (very) drunk. He was severely injured and I very much doubt based on his recollection of what happened that he would a) have injured himself at all if he was on foot and b) even if he had fell on those stairs, he would have had much less serious injuries.
- treve 4y ago
  Sure, but you are comparing statistics for an entire country to a specific incident. Of course there's a non-0 risk, but when it's about traffic and safety it's about acceptable, not complete elimination of risk. It's still illegal in the Netherlands to bike drunk. I'm sure this would be aggressively enforced in cities like Groningen if statistically there were major safety issues Thursdays and Friday nights with drunk cyclists, but this is not the case. Not to say that your friend shouldn't have walked instead though. Drunkness is also a sliding scale. Luckily with cyclists the chances are way lower of murdering others.

Mashimo 4y ago

> but don’t ride a bike. I'm drunk biking and thought about if I should stop. But I have never hear about anyone having an accident related to drunk biking. In theory I could run head first into oncoming biker. But I never felt being that drunk in a way that would lose control. That would also make it illegal where I live.