CB HI

Do not cycle drunk in Germany!

https://www.treehugger.com/files/2009...g-15-years.php

Banned from cycling for 15 years!

Digital_Cowboy

On public streets, I would imagine that on private streets/property that he could still ride. Would the trails going through the German countryside be considered public streets as far as this offense is concerned?

Ed Holland

How do you ban someone from riding a bicycle? That is to say, how could the law possibly prevent the gentleman in question from obtaining and using another bike?

Very silly.

dougmc

At least in the US, judges include punishments like that all the time, even for things that don't involve licenses.

You use a computer to steal money? You're banned from computer use for a few years. (Hopefully this isn't as popular a punishment as it used to be.)
You use the Internet to stalk somebody? Banned from the Internet (or computers in general.)
Sex crime? Banned from being near schools, etc.
etc.

If you disobey the prohibition, you get with contempt of court (or in the case of sex offender issues, things that are even worse.)

Though to be fair, it looks like he wasn't exactly banned from cycling for cycling drunk. He was banned from cycling for getting arrested while really drunk, then ignoring the demand that he submit to a medical exam that everybody arrested for being really drunk is forced to submit to. But yeah, 15 years seems quite excessive -- but Europe is certainly known for being far more strict on alcohol offenses than the US.

Digital_Cowboy

Also let's not forget that there are more people using their bicycles for transportation in Europe then the US. So overall it's probably not an unreasonable punishment.

He may also have as I think was stated in the article that because he didn't drive and had no intentions of driving that logically it didn't apply to him or others in his situation.

And also let's not forget that there are other countries with even more severe penalties such as:

Drunk Driving Penalties in other Countries


Australia:
The names of the drivers are sent to the local newspapers and are printed under the heading "He's Drunk and in Jail". Malaysia:
The Driver is jailed and if married, his wife is jailed too. South Africa
A 10 year prison sentence and the equivalent of a $10,000.00 fine Turkey
Drunk drivers are taken 20 miles outside of town by police and are forced to walk back under escort Norway
Three weeks in jail at hard labor, one year loss of license. Second offense within five years, license revoked for life. Finland & Sweden
Automatic jail for one year of hard labor Costa Rica
Police remove plates from car Russia
License revoked for life England
One year suspension and a $250.00 fine and jail for one year France
Three year loss of license, one year in jail and a $1000.00 fine Poland
Jail, fine and forced to attend political lectures Bulgaria
A second conviction results in execution El Salvador
Your first offense is your last---execution by firing squad

I like both Turkey's and Australia's penalties. On the Malaysia punishment I have to wonder what would happen if the couple children.

GodsBassist

I'm all about strict DWI penalties, but this is a little silly. The punishment was to remove his ability to operate unlicensed vehicles, but he can still drive a car? It seems this wasn't really about safety, which should be the goal of any DWI law, imo.

Digital_Cowboy

I suggest that you go back and re-read the article, he has to wait until his record clears before he can apply for a drivers license:

<quote>
Hahn was given a €500 ($700) penalty, which he paid. And he would have to live with the fact that there would be no chance to apply for a driver's license until his record cleared. He thought the affair was over and done with.
</quote>

Student Caught Biking Drunk Banned from Cycling for 15 Years

by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 11.29.09

Cars & Transportation (bikes)

Image: Bild

Americans are still reacting to the news that a man got away with only a four-month jail sentence after shooting a bicyclist in the head in cold blood, in front of his three-year old child. In Germany, the web is buzzing about a sentence equally extreme, on the opposite end of the spectrum. Christopher-Felix Hahn, a student of theater science in Gießen, has learned he is banned from riding a bike, skateboard or any other "unlicensed vehicle" on the streets -- for fifteen years.
Most cyclists in Germany know someone with a friend-of-a-friend who lost their driver's license because they were caught cycling drunk. Cyclists are vehicles subject to street laws just like everybody else, under the law. When conversation turns to the topic, the question of what happens if a cyclist has no driver's license soon follows. Now the Hahn case provides the answer.
Christopher-Felix Hahn says he did not feel unduly impaired when he made the decision to take his bicycle home from a party in June of 2008. On his way home in the wee hours of the morning, he attracted the attention of the local police. The police administered a breath test and found a blood-alcohol content of 0.171%, over three times the German legal limit of 0.05%.
Hahn was given a €500 ($700) penalty, which he paid. And he would have to live with the fact that there would be no chance to apply for a driver's license until his record cleared. He thought the affair was over and done with.
However, in Germany, all arrests with a blood alcohol content finding of over 0.16% must be reported to the drivers' licensing bureau. Hahn was surprised to receive a letter requiring that he submit to a medical and psychological examination. He ignored the letter. After all, he had no plans to seek a driver's license. And the €500 euro cost for the examination was a steep price for a student.
The lack of response did not go unnoticed. The letter was soon followed by a second missive, this time forbidding Hahn from using any license-free vehicle on the public streets. According to the Geißener Anzeige, the local newspaper, authorities indicated that such a ban cannot be lifted for at least fifteen years.

GodsBassist

Ahh, gotcha. Still silly, though. Hope he gets an appeal of some kind.

Digital_Cowboy

From the tone of the article it seemed to be a common punishment for drinking and driving any type of vehicle in Germany.

Digital_Cowboy

Hmm, kind of makes one wounder what the penalty would be IF one was riding a horse (or other animal) while drunk.

tatfiend 

Nothing new here I suspect. When I was in Germany in 1972 I met a German who told me he was banned from driving for 1 year and fined one month's income for having been arrested for bicycling when drunk. The level of many fines in Germany is scaled to the income of the offender.

BTW I recently noted that the listed fine for cycling drunk in California is up to $250. They get off easy there compared to in Germany.

dougmc

In Texas, the DWI law specifically says `motor vehicle' -- so it doesn't apply to cyclists. Therefore, there's no penalty in Texas for bicycling drunk, though of course a public intoxication or reckless driving charges are fair game.

And to be fair, I think that's reasonable. If you're too drunk, you can't cycle at all (it's not like a car, where all you have to do is push that pedal, though I guess a tricycle could get past that) and if you're sober enough that you can bike, you're more of a danger to yourself than anybody else, though pedestrians and other cyclists will probably want to avoid you. Certainly, if somebody was drunk, I'd much rather have them ride their bicycle home rather than drive home. The risks to others are much reduced, and so I think the penalties should be reduced. And in Austin, the police certainly will give you a PI charge and throw you in the drunk tank if they do catch you -- which isn't good, but it's far better than a DWI charge.

randya

https://drunkcyclist.com/

GraysonPeddie

DrunkCyclist.com? What does this have to do with the thread? I will never come back to that website with that somewhat-dark yellow background...

akohekohe

The February 21, 2001 issue of JAMA has an article that concludes that your risk of being killed while cycling is 20 times higher at the 0.08 g/dl level (legally drunk in most state) and 5.6% higher at the 0.02 g/dl level than if you are stone cold sober. The results were confounded by the fact that drunk cyclists were much less likely to be wearing a helmet than other cyclists. As far as being a risk to other road users, I might mention that in Germany (where the incident CB HI references took place) in a recent three year period 33 people died in pedestrian bicycle collisions but I won't because this is apparently a sensitive subject for some people on this forum. I actually was once almost a victum of a drunk cyclist albeit in an indirect way - a car swerved to miss the drunk cyclist who had swerved in his path and barely missed hitting me ...

I-Like-To-Bike

And the authors had to backtrack, hem and haw and shuffle their feet, and acknowledge that their shocking conclusions could not be honestly drawn from their data, after Charles Komanoff's rebuttal letter was published in the same magazine on May 16, 2001. See attached.

Pedaleur

...whereas in neighboring Denmark, 78% of poll respondents admit to having cycled drunk.



(It's illegal, sort of, and you could lose your driving privileges, sort of, but half the cyclists that get seen at the emergency room after 9:00 are drunk.)

akohekohe

Komanoff's letter is correct about the odds ratio - the 5.6% is for the 0.02 level or greater so he is quite right they it tells nothing about how much your risk is increased at the 0.02 level. I actually noticed this when I read the article and should have been more precise in my post by saying that it was 0.02 or higher.While Komanoff does make the case that there appears to be no evidence from the data that one drink has any effect on the injury rate (2.4% of the injured group and 2.0% of the control group had alcohol in the 0.02 to 0.07 range) there is fairly persuasive evidence that the risk is a lot higher for the 0.08 group, given that that 10.5% of those injured had an alcohol level over 0.08 but only 1% of the control group did. Komanoff did his share of dancing around this point himself. Now the 0.08 and higher group includes some that were as high as 0.20 so we really can't tell from the data as presented in the article if it was those at the high end that were driving the injuries. But as I did point out in the previous post this data is confounded by the finding that people were about seven times as likely to be wearing a helmet who were not drinking as those that were, however, the helmet rate even among the non-drinking group was only 38%. To assess the contribution the helmet effect made they should have examined the causes of the injuries and separated out the head traumas. What else is a real limitation to the study is it did not consider night time riding. This was eliminated because they thought is was too risky to get the controls at night because they would have had to stop cyclists along the route at night which they thought a very risky thing to do. My gut feeling is there are more drunks on the road after dark, so this is a big limitation to the study.

So, it appears that the risk is about ten times higher if you are over the 0.08 level but maybe not if you're wearing a helmet and maybe not if you're riding at night and maybe not if you are riding at night with a helmet. It would be interesting to see the complete data set which should be available since it was funded by the NIH and the CDC. I think there can be little doubt that if you are over 0.08 your risk is higher but it would be nice to have better data on what the increased risk is.

Locally, the only cyclist fatality in my memory where the cyclist was clearly at fault, was at night, wrong way on a one way street, with a very intoxicated cyclist.

I-Like-To-Bike

More useless free floating statistical factoids grasped from cyberspace.

How often did/do the poll respondents cycle drunk? Once in a lifetime? Equivalent to asking people if they EVER have taken an illegal drug, done something dishonest, or told a lie, and then drawing conclusions about the poll respondents' drug problems, or how many criminals or habitual liars were in the population.

Also the issue is accidents while drinking. Was there any data gathered and published showing an association of the 78% factoid with accident/risk rates? If not, what does the 78% factoid provide besides a scare headline?

Any info on what was the metric used for pinning the "drunk" tag on emergency room patients? (I suspect smell of alcohol, or any indication that the patient had had a drink) What percentage of all people seen at the unnamed emergency room after 9:00 are described as "drunk"?

Using the same metric, what percentage of all adult Danes could be considered drunk by/after 9PM?

Pedaleur

Did you even see the picture I posted? It should be self-evident.

Anyway, I forget that some people take their A&S seriously, so here's something to get worked up over:

https://ekstrabladet.dk/nationen/article1227545.ece

https://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article1226979.ece

I-Like-To-Bike

That picture (probably staged BTW) is your best "answer" to my legitimate questioning your post of statistical gibberish? One thing is evident, and it is related to your ability to make a rational or logical response. Smarm is neither a defense, nor an argument.

Pedaleur

My ability to make a logical response >>>>>>>>>>>> Your sense of humor.

Stop hyperventilating and google translate the links; they actually answer most of your questions.

Since you'd probably rather just simmer in your juices, I'll at least answer one: the picture is not staged.

I-Like-To-Bike

I am not going to translate anything. You posted the Factoid, in English, on an English language site, with no detail or explanation, support or explain its significance in English, if you can.

Or perhaps your posting the factoids and picture, as well as your concern about Danish drinking habits was just a stupid Danish joke, that my lack of a Pedaleur Brand sense of humor didn't pick up on.

Staged or not, the photo doesn't mean diddley in any language, in support of the 78% factoid, or anything else, except the language of goofball internet ranting and posting meaningless photos to match unsupported conclusions.

Pedaleur

It's not just my sense of humor. You lack _any_ sense of humor.

I-Like-To-Bike

I guess I just don't find the humor in passing off moronic gibberish, idle gossip and random factoids as useful information or advice about bicycling safety. And you do.