Drink-cycling - is it legal?
Tis the season and all that. For many of us, "all that" involves too much alcohol. Dealing with your nearest and dearest is enough to drive anyone to drink.
Which makes today’s question timely – is it legal to drink-ride your bicycle? My colleague raised the question this morning and it’s an interesting issue.
Common sense would dictate that surely it must be illegal to ride under the influence. While it's up to me whether I put myself in danger, I’d be a danger to everyone else on the road if I was drunk on a bike.
A cursory internet search returns the answer that yes, it is illegal to ride a bike while drunk. There are the to-be-expected urban myths "yeah my friend got done" type stories. Though the fact that everyone refers to "DIC" is the first indication they may be wrong. In NZ, as far as I know, there is no such charge as DIC or DUI. Here, a drink-driver is usually charged with EBA – excess breath/blood alcohol.
I should know, because as a junior reporter I sat through countless boring court sessions as an endless parade of people were charged with it. So to summarise a suddenly long story, I can’t find the legislation that dictates drunken bicycling is an offence.
In fact, the legislation that I can find suggests the drink-driving provisions do not seem to include bikes at all. According to the Land Transport Act 1998, section 12, “a person may not drive or attempt to drive a motor vehicle while under the influence of drink”.
However, jumping to the interpretation section, the term motor vehicle does appear to include a bicycle, as you would expect. Normal bikes don't have motors. The definition excludes pedestrian-controlled machines and includes only vehicles drawn or propelled by mechanical power. Clearly a normal bicycle is not a motor vehicle.
(Don’t laugh, I was forced to spend an entire semester analysing nonsensical questions like this in law school. It was quite possibly the worst paper I ever studied. That’s four months of my life I’ll never get back. I’d sue if I didn’t know I couldn’t.)
Incidentally, I’ve also cycled through drink-drive checkpoints without being stopped and tested, but I could argue that given the coordination and balance a bike requires, it would be obvious if I had been drinking.
You might be able to point to the exact part of the law that renders this entire blog post pointless, but even if you can, surely it should be easy to find?
If it’s that difficult to track down the answer, it’s not a very effective law.
What do you think?
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Given that people occasionally get done for being drunk and in charge of a horse (although the last one of those I heard about was in Australia) I think it's a given that the police will take a dim view.
But I thought the law change years ago (that made it illegal to ride your cycle on the footpath) basically did it by defining a cycle as a vehicle.
Legal or not, getting on a bike while under the influence is not sensible. Even less so if going and playing in traffic at the same time.
Although obviously, alcohol fueled decisions aren't always the brightest anyway.
Actually you bring up an interesting point as reading the definition of a 'motor vehicle' then it tells me that you can be drunk while riding.
In saying that I know someone who has been done for drink riding in the Tron donkeys years ago, so possibly before the current act was put in place.
Also, I'd say its pretty unwise to ride while drunk. I've done it once quite a while ago but I was so paranoid that I'd get pulled over by the cops that I rode like a complete nana anyway. I wouldn't recommend it though.
There are other rules, though, that stipulate if you are using any form of transport or operating any kind of vehicle, be it a bike or car etc, on the road then you must not have breath alcohol in excess of the specified limits. Seeing as bicycle must be ridden on the road, as it is actually illegal to ride them on the footpath, you are accountable to those laws. It would certainly be an interesting one to argue given your above points of what the road code laws state. I've certainly ridden home after a few lagers at work drinks and the only real side affect is that the ride takes twice is long, is really slow and much much more fun.
In Austria they have the same rules for cyclists and drivers in regards to drinking first - thay might have something to do with the large amount of cyclists in their country.
a bicycle is defined as a motor vehicle in nz, so is a trailer, and forklift, etc. However, a bicycle is exempt from many constraints under the land transport act 2002.
As a side issue, as stated here a couple of times today. As it is illegal to ride a bicycle on the footpath, how does one start kids out on cycing? Do you get them to ride on the road or on the footpath? And if they are on the footpath, do you have to ride on the road?
Can you imagine 4 & 5 year olds being expected to ride on the roads as they are today?
I have a friend that has been breath tested five times while riding home at night. Equally I have seen cops confiscating the bike of some teenager who I presumed was drunk.
I always wondered if it was legal to ride a horse while drunk. How about a sheep or a pig? Cheap and legal transport home from the pub?
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I'm fairly certain you're right, in that the alcohol and drug offences under the Land Transport Act don't apply to bicycles. The careless and reckless driving offences do apply to bicycles though - so I guess it really depends on how well you ride your bicycle while intoxicated...