Hold My Bike: What Happens When You Cycle Impaired?

Q: Last week you wrote about walking and driving impaired, but what about cycling impaired? How dangerous is it, and what happens if you get a DUI on a bicycle? Can you still lose your license?

A: There’s a reason it’s called impairment. Whether it’s driving, walking, biking, or any other activity – transportation and otherwise – alcohol and other drugs make you worse at them. You can find evidence for that in the many reckless, dangerous, and foolish stunts that begin with, “hold my beer.” As I’ve mentioned before, in Washington half of all motor vehicle fatalities involve impairment and over half of pedestrians killed in traffic crashes are impaired.

It’s not much better when we look at cyclist fatalities. Forty-five percent of cyclists killed in traffic crashes were impaired. Impaired cyclists are four times more likely to get in a crash. Impaired cyclists killed in crashes engaged more often in high-risk behaviors like riding against traffic, running red lights, riding at night, and not wearing a helmet.

Clearly, there’s a pattern here. If you want to drastically reduce your risk of a serious crash, always drive, bike, and walk sober. But the data show that some people don’t make that choice. When a cyclist rides impaired, the potential legal consequences depend on what state you’re in.

In some states it is a violation of the law to ride a bicycle while impaired. Washington is not one of them. However, some of our neighbors are. Of our six closest states, Oregon, California, and Utah prohibit cycling impaired (with lesser penalties than driving a motor vehicle), while Idaho, Montana, and Nevada don’t include bicycles in their DUI laws. Of the states I’ve looked at with impaired cycling laws, they don’t include license suspension, presumably because cycling doesn’t require a license.

Upon reading Washington’s DUI law you might conclude that it includes bicycles. It states that a person is guilty of DUI if they “drive a vehicle within this state” while impaired. The law also includes bicycles in the definition of a vehicle when it comes to the rules of the road. A bicycle is a vehicle and it’s illegal to operate a vehicle impaired, so what’s going on here?

Back in 1992 an officer in Montesano saw a cyclist swerving down the road and pulled him over. The cyclist’s speech was slurred, he failed the sobriety tests, and his breath test returned a result of .13 BAC. The officer arrested the cyclist for DUI. The cyclist was subsequently convicted of DUI, asked for a new trial, and was convicted again.

It took three years, but the Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, stating that the legislature intended the law to apply to motor vehicles only. When the legislature wrote Washington’s DUI laws, bicycles were excluded from the definition of a vehicle. That changed in 1991, but the DUI law still uses the terms “vehicle” and “motor vehicle” interchangeably.

Washington does have a law about intoxicated cyclists; it permits law enforcement to give the cyclist a ride to a safe place or release them to a sober person, but the cyclist can refuse any assistance. The officer can also impound the bike until the rider is sober.

Even though DUI laws don’t apply to cyclists, most other traffic laws do. Many of those are infractions, but if a rider’s behavior is egregious enough it could rise to the level of disorderly conduct (if they obstruct traffic) or reckless endangerment (if they create a substantial risk of death or serious injury to someone else). Aside from the law though, always riding sober is a good survival skill.