Drinking & Riding

Poll: Drinking and Riding

After responding to BradfordBenns poll on favorite drinks, it made me think of something that I see all the time.

Do you guys: 1. Refuse to drink and ride? 2. Think its OK to have a beer or two (very moderate drinking)? 3. Party like its 1999?

I ask this because one of my favorite destinations on the weekend is Helen GA where I like to sit outside and have lunch at a restaurant that caters to motorcyclist (motorcycle only parking in front). I usually am the only guy I see there with a soft drink. 6'4" 240lbs of biker wimp drinking a diet coke.

This March will be my first full year riding and I see my skills improving everytime I go for a ride. Should I cut myself some slack and have a beer or two with lunch, or continue with my current rule of no alcohol whatsoever when two wheeling it?

Be honest if you choose to reply.

Two wheels = tea toting

Good topic

IF I drink at all when riding my bike, it is limited to one with a meal. I can think of three times last year when I had a toddy.
But mostly I don't drink when riding (or driving for that matter).

Hi James,
It is an interesting question since you are like myself a fairly big person (Me 6'2" 215#) and could probably stand to handle a beer or two while having lunch.
However if you ,or anyone else, has any doubts about drinking and riding/driving I think you should not. If ,god forbid, you get into a scrape and had one or two drinks, you still have to live with what happened. Your reaction times are going to be somewhat slower.
Even if you are not legally drunk it is still a matter of being smart about your safety and that of other too. Better to be safe than sorry. Besides that , why give in to peer pressure??

Do you guys: 1. Refuse to drink and ride? 2. Think its OK to have a beer or two (very moderate drinking)? 3. Party like its 1999?

"Drink n Drive" Nope!! Never have never will...not even one.

I like my share alcohol as much as anyone else. And I'm not against the use alcohol at all.
But,my reasons for not drinking and driving were "reinforced"
Feb 6, 2003. My sister-in-law was tragically killed by a drunk driver.
Please,don't drink and drive.

I don't drink and ride. If I do have a beer, my wait period before riding is a couple hours.

Besides, when you're done for the day, that beer tastes that much better.

Blue Knight said:

And that's the way it should be. A single drink may put you under the 0.08, but why chance it?

Mike

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Got that right, Mike. Besides, I can't think of a riding situation where I can get by without all of my abilities.

I say no until the end of the riding for the day.....then it's "Let's have one!" 8>P

Riding Like the Wind (in a few more weeks)...

CHASMAN
'02 BLACK K12RS

One for the road <erp>

When I was a bit younger, I used to have a one beer rule:
1 beer + 1 hour = be careful + go straight home.

Today, I mostly drink something safer if I ride. Since I like single malt, I found a 'drink-a-round' solution that you might like. It's a great ploy at parties, too, because only the bartender knows you're on low octane. It's called a Jim Dandy, but it isn't in any bar book:

1 glass club soda + a little ice + 5 big dashes of Angostura bitters = a nice, dry drink you can take to a MADD meeting. It looks like a mixed drink, tastes good (takes a little time to learn), and you can drink them all night long. Very hydrating, too.

Caveat drinker: Make sure your bartender understands that his bar cost is probably less than a diet coke. I had one lady friend, several years ago, get charged $5.50 for one. Here in MI, a friendly barkeep will charge the same as for a Coke; maybe free refills


Jim

I agree with everyones responses. I guess I wanted confirmation of what I already believed.

My brother in law, very often with my sister on back, pretty much considers his ride as a tool for social contact with other riders of the same brand. That's great, I feel the same regarding my ride. However most of their get togethers are held at bars and he freely admits that he always has a few at these outings. I've tried to discourage this without sounding holier than thou but I don't think he understands the dangers inherent in alcohol and riding.

Ever notice all the things that we, as BMW riders, share regarding the ride: The bike itself, the gear we use, the training we take. I'm not saying this makes us better than any other rider on the road, but I find it interesting that our similar attitudes regarding the ride (including drinking and riding) led us to BMW as the bike that best suits our riding philosophy.

It ain't easy sometimes, but I wait 'til the ride is over to quaff a cold one or three. I will occasionally have one beer with a meal but that's rare. I just don't combine the two.
I'm no goody two-shoes tee-totaller, either. My liver should be donated to science.
But I wait until the ride is done.

no drinking and riding.

something else to ponder is the morning after. on a tour, you
need to take it easy too.

ian

I have a couple of friends who ride Harleys, and at their invitation I sometimes attend a Harley-oriented "bike night" at a nearby Mexican restaurant. I don't drink at all anymore, and even when I did I would never touch any alcohol at all when riding or flying (as pilot). So I was amazed to see that at the bike night virtually everyone had a beer in hand, many looked like they put down multiple beers.

I've also noticed that at least around here (Phoenix, Arizona), most of the Harley-crowd hangouts are bars of one form or another. That doesn't mean everyone there is drinking alcohol, but bars aren't in business to sell soft drinks, and they wouldn't be sponsoring bike nights if everyone was only drinking fizzy water.

It all made me wonder if anyone has ever counted how many crashes occur after biker affairs where alcohol was served. Riding a bike is a challenge in itself, doing it in urban traffic more so, at night yet more, and doing it with a few shots in you can only make it much worse. Seems monumentally stupid to me.

It also made me wonder what the maximum Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) should be for riding a motorcycle. For driving a car it's typically 0.8%, and by extension that applies to motorcycles as well. But I suspect that if proper measurements were done we'd find that 0.8% is too high for riding a motorcycle, which requires much more alertness and coordination than driving a car. If proper study were to indicate a lower BAC for motorcycling, I for one would not be opposed to lowering the legal limit, even to near-zero if so indicated, as has long been the case for pilots. The skills and mental acuity required to ride a bike are much more akin to flying an airplane than driving a car, so perhaps the alcohol standards for motorcyclists should be more like those of a pilot. (I write as someone who is both a rider and a licensed pilot.)

Pilots, even of small single-seat private aircraft, have long had to live by the 8-hour rule: After your last drink you must wait 8 hours before you can step into the cockpit of an airplane. Considering the significant percentage of motorcyclist fatalities who are found to have alcohol in their blood, I suspect an 8-hour rule for motorcyclists would have a very significant effect on motorcycle crashes and fatalities.

When I'm do'n an epic kinda day in the Southwest, I can taste that Corona 100 miles before I get to it.

I stop, shower, find a Long Neck...and just relax.........No more ride'n for me that day.

Drink'n.....At the end of the day for me

Formalized James O's poll.


sorry kids...could you go back and vote?

BradfordBenn said:

Two wheels = tea toting

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I think that's "tea totalling"

KBasa said:

Got that right, Mike. Besides, I can't think of a riding situation where I can get by without all of my abilities.

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If you think you're "ok" after "a few".... next time you have two beers try a couple of slow parking-lot u-turns. The difference just one or two make (I weigh 230) scared the poo out of me.

Like some others, I firmly believe that my liver is inherently bad and must be punished, but I always wait until I'm done for the day. Kbasa is right, it just makes that first one of the evening (or morning) taste that much better.

The Hurt Report stats on drinking and riding are just scary (who cares how long ago the study was done or whatever... the drinking connection is scary).

fish said:

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Jeez, that was a fun weekend...