

Don't drink and bike - grellas
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/04/dc-court-dont-drink-and-bike.html

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stephenjudkins
Biking drunk should be legal, or at least a far less serious offense than
driving drunk.

If you're looking to minimize injuries or deaths (which is the ostensible
reason for drunk driving laws) it makes sense to provide an incentive for
people to not drive drunk. A cyclist is _extremely_ unlikely to kill or injure
a pedestrian or another cyclist--and probably incapable of injuring a driver--
while drivers kill tens of thousands of other drivers and thousands of
pedestrians every year. Cars are incredibly dangerous.

If someone wants to ride a bicycle drunk, they are realistically only
endangering themselves. If people are going to get drunk anyway--and they will
--allowing them an additional relatively safe, legal method to get home would
make the streets much safer for everyone.

In Portland, people bike drunk all the time. There are extremely few arrests.
Cops drove by my obviously drunk friend the other night and chose to do
nothing. I guess it's not an enforcement priority here.

In this case, it sounds like the guy probably deserved it. Pedestrian-bicycle
collisions do occur and people are occasionally injured or killed. But it's
not common.

I got these stats from <http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac-
safety.html>. Not the most unbiased, I know, so if someone wants to take issue
with them let me know.

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geebee
Biking drunk should be an offense. Looks like the guy who got the BUI almost
hit a small child. That could be serious.

I hope that the courts find a way to treat it as a lesser offense than driving
drunk, though. I'm not saying it's good, I'm, just saying that if a drunk guy
wants to get home and is looking at his bike and his six ton SUV, I would hope
that the law would say "both are illegal, so call a cab or use your feet -
that said, we'll punish you much more severely if you drive the six ton SUV."

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chronomex
Washington state has a law specifically addressing this. If you're not a
threat to public safety, a police officer can give you a verbal warning and
offer you a ride home. He may not arrest or otherwise compel you. If he deems
you to be a threat to public safety, he can compel you to accept a ride home,
and he can confiscate your bicycle -- but you must be allowed to pick it up,
without financial penalty, within 30 days.

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cedar
Oregon has super clear laws on this.

ORS814.400 states "bicycle is a vehicle for purposes of the vehicle code"

I've known plenty of people who have gotten BUI's. On the up side of that it
also means bikes are allowed the full lane! which as a biker, is really great
and necessary sometimes.

here is the full law: <http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/814.html>

