Drinking While Biking Now a DUI Offense
Are you a fixed-gear enthusiast who enjoys a boozey brunch at Red Derby before a ride? A 50 States biker who toasts to each of the 13 original colonies with drinks at Bourbon? A Tweed Ride–r who imbibes a gimlet at Marvin before hopping on his penny-farthing? Or, you know, someone who sometimes bikes to happy hour? Consider yourself on notice.
WUSA reports that the D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that intoxicated bicycle riders can be charged for driving under the influence. The decision stems from a 2007 case in which a man was charged with a DUI after drunkenly climbing on a bike after police told him not to and then -- under the eyes of God, country, and the afore-mentioned police officers -- nearly striking a child while riding his bike. This bozo argued that he couldn't be charged with a DUI, because a bike is not a vehicle, but lost the appeal.
Of course, he was absolutely correct to appeal. One of the reasons that a DUI carries an enormous stigma (professionally, socially, and legally) is that -- and this is going to sound obvious -- driving under the influence is massively dangerous. The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention states that nearly one-third of all traffic-related deaths in the U.S. during 2008 stemmed from alcohol-impaired accidents. During the same year, those drivers who died while driving under the influence were much more likely to be repeat offenders.
Biking while drinking isn't exactly safe. The New York Times's Jennifer 8. Lee recently ran an item on a study in New York City that found that about one in five bicyclists who died in fatal accidents had alcohol in their bloodstream. But this statistic is somewhat misleading. It is not clear from this data how many of those bicyclists were at fault in the accidents that led to their deaths. Further, the absolute number of bicyclists killed is small: Due to the margin of toxicology tests actually administered and some inherent drawbacks to the tests themselves, the number of alcohol-impaired bikers involved in fatal accidents in New York City over a 10-year time period turns out to be only 18 people. The number in reality is likely larger, but by my envelope figure, that figure is half the number of people killed in a single day in 2008 as a result of alcohol-impaired driving.
To sentence an intoxicated bicyclist with a DUI suggests, before God and country, that the rider posed the same danger to himself and to those around him as an intoxicated driver. A DUI charge does not come with an asterisk. If courts want to dissuade intoxicated bike riding without watering down the crime category of operating a motor vehicle while drinking, the justice system ought to come up with a more appropriate name for the crime. The term "DUI" signals something much more significant than drinking while moving.