Season to be merry

Tags: city cycling, commuting, Cycling

Since the bicycle is under the international Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968), a bicycle (or “cycle”, as referenced by the convention) is defined to be a vehicle and a cyclist is considered to be a driver.

The argument that cycling while over the legal limit is not as bad as driving a car, is weak.

Some say that if you are on a bicycle while drunk you can’t hurt or even worse kill others with your bicycle. Well there is plenty of accident that have happened when a bicycle hits others and I don’t think that the person that got hit have enjoyed it one bit. And while you are under the influence of alcohol there is a good chance that you will do dumb things.

On the guardian bike blog there are a few post and many comments about the issue of beer and bikes really mix.

Sami Grover over on treehugger says in his post , Is Cycling Drunk as Bad as Drunk Driving?

But the argument that a cyclist is less likely to kill someone else is only valid up to a point – after all, unpredictable road users are a danger to everyone – and when I’m driving I would much rather know that the cyclist in front of me is sober and is unlikely to wobble into my path. (I also don’t really want to live the rest of my life knowing I killed someone, even if it was their fault!)

And I can only agree with him, you might not hurt others while drunk cycling but there is a good chance that you could cause others to do so.

Like this case from Germany, Student drunk biking banned from cycling 15 years, it is still drunk (driving) cycling.

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