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Poland has decided that to ride a bike drunk is a jailable offense. When convicted for such a terrible, oh so terrible crime, you will likely get not one night behind bars, but 11.5 months (two thousand are in jail for this). I’m not sure if I’m amused or troubled, shocked or laughing, but the law can definitely be branded with the “stupid” tag.
As always, laws should be supported by proper evidence, with the focus taken off of individual cases. This does not always happen when courts interpret the law and set precedents (John vs Government of Landistan).
For evidence, a study should be conducted to determine what a person who is riding a bike drunk would have done had a bike not been available. Personally, it goes both ways for me (sometimes I do it instead of walking, sometimes I would have received a lift from someone who drank).
Another thing to dig out would be comprehensive numbers on the people hurt or killed by such accidents and what role they had in the accident (drunk cyclist collided with pedestrian, motorvehicule, other cyclist etc). I suspect that if anyone is getting killed due to drunk cyclists, it’s the drunk cyclists themselves. If so, then I believe that this is their problem. Unlike seatbelt laws, the advantage of punishing drunk cyclists is not clear and the only person in a position to determine the answer to this (even though he may be wrong) is the drunk cyclist himself. This is something we have to consider part of the individual’s domain, rather than that of society. Unless, of course, a solid case backed by proper data clearly shows that it would be in society’s advantage to punish drunk cyclists.
I disagree that walking drunk should be cause for a fine, but if that is the case, then the same should be applied to a drunk cyclist. Perhaps a larger fine, but it should remain similar to the walking drunk fine. To have one and not the other seems hypocritical, unless there is evidence to support such discrimination between modes of transportation.
-Dussault
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