Thursday, March 8, 2001

Many Bicyclists Drunk in Accidents

By Ira Dreyfuss

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - As a drunken bicyclist, Martin Guttenplan thought he was doing fine. "I was pretty giddy and could hardly ride the bike, but I thought I did a great job," said Guttenplan, a Florida state transportation planner who got deliberately drunk to demonstrate how alcohol affects bike riding.

Guttenplan teaches bike education for the League of American Bicyclists, a riders' group. He was on a test course for a segment of the TV program "Inside Edition." He had reached a 0.12 percent blood-alcohol level 0.08 percent can get a person arrested in Florida.

"I moved way out into the lane. I was going on the wrong side of the cones. All those sorts of things," Guttenplan recalled of the segment, shot about three years ago. "But what was most scary about it was that, in that state, I thought I was doing OK. Any sense of judgment was also affected."

Guttenplan's experience is reflected in a new study. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, reviewing 124 Maryland accidents involving cyclists ages 15 years or older, found that 24 percent of those who died and 9 percent of those seriously injured had blood-alcohol levels of 0.02 percent or higher.

"The great majority of the ones who had been drinking were above 0.10 percent, which is the Maryland point at which you are considered to be impaired," said researcher Susan P. Baker. "The average blood-alcohol concentration was 0.18 percent, which is very, very high."

Riding a bike takes more physical ability than driving a car, yet many of the riders in the accidents were pretty far gone, Baker said. At a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.18 percent, "you or I probably would not be able to find our bicycles," she said. "It suggests to me that, if they can ride bicycles with blood-alcohol concentrations that high, they are probably pretty serious drinkers."

Risks of injury rose with the blood-alcohol level, the study found. At 0.08 percent, the risk was 20 times the level faced by people with levels below 0.02 percent.

The researchers compared those cases to 342 other cyclists who were stopped later at the same places and times of day of the accidents. Those riders were given breath tests to determine blood-alcohol levels.

About 3 percent of the random rider sample had blood-alcohol levels of 0.02 percent or more. However, the data probably understate the prevalence and danger of drunken biking, said the report in the Feb. 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings only cover daylight accidents, because researchers felt it unsafe to have investigators out at night for the onsite surveys. "Alcohol is even more of a problem at night," Baker said.

Researchers also found that drunken riders were less likely to wear helmets. Thirty-five percent of the interviewed riders wore helmets, compared with 5 percent of those in accidents. Perhaps the riders in the accidents did not own a helmet or chose not to put one on, the report speculated. Another possibility is that the riders were too impaired to realize they needed a helmet, it said.

Although the study did not examine it, Baker suspected many of the injured riders had taken to biking because they had lost their drivers' licenses due to driving under the influence of alcohol.

A police officer in Boulder, Colo., has found this often to be the case in his area. "I would say maybe 30 percent are people who don't have a license because of DUI restrictions," said Sgt. Rob Bustrom. "They are trying an alternate mode, but they haven't quit the DUI part of it."

Drivers and cyclists under the influence commonly think their ability is greater than the alcohol tests reveal, Bustrom said. "Most people involved in the testing feel they are doing real good ... when they don't," he said.