The real problem is not that $20 (or whatever) is too much to spend on a taxi, but there are no taxis at all.

Disclaimer: This isn't an excuse for drink-driving, you should think about this before you go out, but clearly there are a lot of people who either don't think about it or can't help themselves.

In my college town, before Uber, you had three choices getting home:

- Taking the bus which didn't run anytime after 10pm - Calling a friend which really only worked when you planned ahead - Calling the local taxi service which was limited and was pretty expensive unless you had a ton of people riding with you. They did "drunk bus" kind of rides mostly.

Planning transportation (DD, drunk bus, etc) was really the only way to get home unless you just walked everywhere. The fraternities and sororities ran DD systems for their members and friends which I admired but couldn't take advantage of. After Uber came out, use exploded and the DUIs started going down.

And no public transport. The real difference to Europe is not the lack of taxis (you often don't get one in Europe at night when everyone leaves the bar), it's that you don't have acceptable and safe public transport (night buses) as an alternative.

in some place drunk riding a bike might have similar repercussions [incl. criminal charges above certain levels].

In Poland riding a bike while drunk results in losing your driving licence.

Same in Sweden. It's not so much riding the bike though - you can actually lose it by just being drunk walking too.

Wait, how can that be true? I worked in Gothenburg for several months a few years back, and there is a strong drinking culture. My poor language skills and memory may have me wrong, but all pubs advertise 'stor stark' happy hour, which means the beers are big and strong. If drunk walking can get your license revoked, how are there so many cars on the road?

You aren't going to get your license revoked because you are drunk, even very drunk.

But if you are the kind of person the police takes care of on a bench multiple times then it's within their (or rather the relevant authority, not the police) power to consider a person "unfit" for having a drivers license. Won't happen to "normal" people, even if on a bike.

And if you don't have a driver's licence?

See, this is where the intention of the law sort of falls apart - because in that case, you are only given a fine. So the punishment is disproportional towards people who have a driving licence. People who don't have one are punished a lot less for the exact same offence.

This reminds me of the old joke about the preacher. He is giving it the full fire and brimstone treatment, shouting that in hell there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth at the eternal punishment. One cheeky young lad asks, "But what if you have no teeth?" The preacher roars back "Teeth will be PROVIDED!"

I think you already know this but: laws, like life, are unfair (well, Judicial Laws. Only the laws of nature are truly impartial).

Only if you're caught driving it on the road.

It's harder to kill someone on a bike tho.

Directly? Yes. Indirectly? No.

You're still posing a traffic hazard.

I'd say the risk of killing someone or causing an incident is much lower when riding drunk on a bike than in a car. To cause a major accident while drunk on a bike (that doesn't only involve yourself) you need an unfortunate chain of events such as a car avoiding you and running into someone else.

For starters, I can usually go most places by bike without doing it on the same roads as cars. (I know that's rarely the case in the US though). If that's not possible, and you are so drunk you can't ride a bike (I can certainly ride a bike safer than a car while drunk simply because the speed is much slower so the reaction times are longer) - then leave the bike too. Walk or get a cab.

College years have provided me with both first and second person anecdotal evidence that cycling can have a higher incapability threshold than walking. That's for the motor control parts at least.

Situational awareness is an entirely different story though. In the dead of night traffic is on easy mode, where you notice the indirect illumination of a car's headlights around two corners and hear them from a mile away. That's just not very challenging (and probably plays a large role in the seemingly universal pattern of more drunk driving in rural areas, unfortunately cars come with an incredible amount of risk compensation through speed). Broad daylight city cycling on the other hand I consider a bad idea even at BAC levels well within the legal limits for driving cars (speaking of Germany here, where in terms of fines, cycling is tolerated at twice the BAC level as driving, a reasonable compromise)

I guess if you're drunk driving at ~10mph the reduced reaction time isn't as important as when you're doing forty.

Except when you're driving at night without lights and are too buzzed to pay attention to traffic.

Road traffic relies on cooperation between the participants. If you can't pull your own weight (i.e. follow traffic laws, control your vehicle, etc), you don't belong on the road.

Also it's not about yourself. Sure, if you kill yourself in an accident on a bicycle you're less likely to injure somebody else but you're still inflicting all kinds of harm on others.

besides yourself running into cars, that try to avoid you... and run into someone else...