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Drunk Cycling

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11 pointsqwzybug15 comments

The original numbers are BS for the simple fact that people don't walk the same distances that they drive. So dividing up statistics between walkers and drivers on a per-mile basis will skew the results.

The people that 'walk while drunk' are most likely the people with a short distance between the bar/party and their destination. If their destination is far away, then they are probably drunk driving instead of drunk walking. How many people would walk to a party that was 5 miles away instead of driving? It's a very self-selecting answer and seems intellectually dishonest to me.

update: To me it feels like the entire reason for coming up with such a statistic is to generate controversy by saying, "drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving."

It makes more sense to view such statistics on a 'per trip' basis (i.e. x% of drunk walking trips end in death and y% of drunk driving trips end in death). This also doesn't take into account the number of dead people per accident too, but that might be skewed by practices like teens piling into a car with a drunk person behind the wheel.

It makes more sense to view such statistics on a 'per trip' basis (i.e. x% of drunk walking trips end in death and y% of drunk driving trips end in death).

You'd really need to take the level of drunkenness into account, too. If you give me three beers I'll be too drunk to drive, but not "drunk" in the usual sense of the word. You'd have to give me another ten before I start being dangerous at a walking pace.

The biggest problem, though, is the random assumption that the same proportion of miles are walked drunk as are driven drunk. I personally have walked quite a few miles while drunk, but have driven no miles while drunk, and I hope I'm not the only one.

As long as we're flaunting statistics for shock value, it wouldn't hurt to work out "riding drunk in a cab" and "taking the bus home drunk", too.

There are a lot of other variables, not the least of which is that the people who pass out drunk in a snowbank and freeze to death (or who ride a rusty Huffy head-on into traffic) are very likely to be homeless and/or mentally ill. (Speaking as somebody who worked in a public library in a poor neighborhood for several years and has dealt with lots of drunken street people...) It's a different segment of society than people who are arrested for drunk driving.

It also doesn't take into account the number of destitute alcoholics that walk everywhere because they don't have the ability to pay for a car, or because the state doesn't allow them to drive one due to prior DUIs. These are more likely to be drunk more often than casual drinkers and could therefore account for the high number of drunk pedestrian deaths.

I think the article misses the point. Drunk drivers kill other people. Drunk walkers kill only themselves.

"Drunk drivers kill other people. Drunk walkers kill only themselves."

Levitt said exactly that less than two minutes into the video.

Indeed, that's some poor use of statistics by the freakonomics guys.

Another example: during the Battle of Britain, 1547 British aircraft were shot down. Of these, the pilot was (I'm guessing) not drunk in 1547 cases. By the same logic, and assuming that one out of every 140 miles was flown drunk, this proves that dogfighting while drunk is infinitely less dangerous than dogfighting while sober.

Steven Levitt wrote an article 2 days ago addressing readers that are critiquing this exact argument: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/what-bother...

Actually that article seems to be addressing a completely different (and indeed wrongheaded) argument that states that it's fatalities-per-hour that matter, not fatalities-per-mile. It doesn't address the real issues here, which are that:

a) The assumption that the proportion of miles walked drunk is the same as the proportion of miles driven drunk is completely unjustified,

b) They don't distinguish between different levels of "drunk"

Whether these arguments are ignored through ignorance or deliberate disingenuousness, though, I'm not sure.

The statistic of deaths / mile is irrelevant. Of course more drunk walkers die per mile walked than drunk drivers die per mile driven, because it takes them > 10 times as long to get anywhere. I think it's more likely that accident rates are based more on time traveled than on distance traveled.

Can anyone explain this comment to me:

    Any self-respecting cyclist would never “roll or ride 
    off a curb into traffic,” because they would never 
    ride on the fucking sidewalk. That’s the surest 
    way to die, no matter what your mental state.

Most knowledgeable cyclists ride on the road all the time. Riding on sidewalks is dangerous, mainly because cars frequently pull out of driveways and stop at the edge of the road, not the edge of the sidewalk. A cyclist on the sidewalk is usually moving faster than the pedestrians that cars are used to, so they don't think to stop at the sidewalk and watch for cyclists.

Makes sense, but what if it's the kind of street that doesn't have driveways? I always wonder why the bicyclists ride on the road, apparently taking serious risks, when the sidewalk is right there and almost entirely empty, as is usually the case in suburbia.

Would just like to point out that drunk cycling is very good fun.

Totally agree. However, I do find it very dangerous. I frequently try to do stupid things that sound like fun, then fall, when I'm cycling drunk.

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