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feature
No cycling (copyright Simon MacMichael)Crazy cycling laws from around the world — no pedalling in swimming pools, no winking at women and more strange cycling customs
Looked at from outside the UK, it may seem bizarre that we have a 19th Century law here, nowadays most usually used against cyclists, that prohibits “wanton or furious driving” (under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861). While reform of the legislation to bring it into the 21st Century has long been promised by the government, there’s little sign of that happening just yet. Other countries though have their own laws regarding cycling that viewed from here, seem equally strange. Here's a selection of some weird and wonderful ones that we've found.
> Is there anywhere cyclists are required to be licensed?
Can you ride tandem? Well you couldn’t in Tokyo – until now
From July 2023, tandem bicycles are now legal across Japan, with the scrapping of a law that prohibited them from the streets of Tokyo, the last place in the country where they had been banned.
Campaigners have hailed the move as enabling blind and partially-sighted people, as well as those with various other disabilities and some elderly people, to be able to enjoy cycling.
Riding while drunk in Germany can lead to driving ban
While it is, quite sensibly an offence in the UK to ride a bicycle while under the influence of alcohol, police officers cannot force a cyclist to undergo a breathalyser test – and because the lack of a test result may make successful prosecution tricky, a charge of careless or reckless cycling may follow instead.
Moreover, since it is not considered a driving offence, even if a conviction for drunk cycling did result, it would not lead to penalty points on a licence or even disqualification from driving.
We are certainly not saying that is crazy to have laws against riding a bike after a few drinks, but some of the punishments in other countries for doing so do seem a bit extreme, as you will see below.
Drunk cyclist in Germany gets 15-year ban from driving…
Not so in Germany, however, where people riding bicycles are subject to the same traffic laws as everyone else, including those related to drink-driving, and they can lose their driving licence, should they hold one.
One young man, riding his bike home from a student party back in 2009, didn’t have a driving licence, but was three times over the limit – and found himself banned from cycling, skateboard, or any other licence-free vehicle for the following 15 years … just another 12 months or so to go, then.
Curiously, the law does allow him to ride a horse – though given that the protagonist here, nowadays no doubt older and wiser and probably fed up of explaining to people why he doesn’t drive a car or ride a bike, is allergic to horse hair, that’s probably not much use to him.
… but across the border in Poland, he could have been jailed
But don’t even think of riding a bike in Poland while drunk – also back in 2009, the country’s constitutional court ruled that cyclists convicted of riding while drunk should be treated the same way as intoxicated drivers, and they should be fined or imprisoned, with the latter the most common course of action, and offenders on average being put away for more than 11 years.
Sans-culottes – Paris’s long-standing ban on women in trousers, unless in the saddle
Paris, undoubtedly, is one of the world’s fashion capitals – making it all the more bizarre that from 1799 until just ten years ago, there was a law forbidding women from wearing trousers, initially enacted during the revolutionary period since presumably you couldn't have women in culottes showing solidarity with those lacking said garments – although if you visited the city a decade or more ago, you’d never have known that such a law was in force in the first place.
There was however one exception, made in 1909, and which permitted women to wear trousers if they were riding a horse or a bike, all in the interests of decorum, naturally, although it doesn’t seem to have actually been compulsory to do so.
No winking at women … and no moustaches
Lachlan Morton = banned in Oklahoma
While laws in many countries are set nationally or perhaps regionally, in the United States, besides federal and statewide legislation, there is a plethora of local ordinances in force, often at town or city level, that provide us with some of the more bizarre examples of legislation governing behaviour on bikes.
Much of the law that made it onto the statute books (and which in many cases has since been repealed) regulated what women were permitted or forbidden to do on a bike, while other legislation dealt with the relationship between the sexes when it came to bike rides.
For example, the town of Newport, Vermont in the north east of the country, permitted married women to go for a bike ride alone on a Sunday, while married men were not allowed to do so (whether a married couple could go out on a ride together, on a bicycle made for two, for instance, is unknown).
A Sunday cycling ban in Ogallala, Vermont, meanwhile, meant that women who were unmarried, widowed, or divorced, were breaking the law if they were found cycling on the Lord’s Day (in passing, we should mention that male or female, reading a newspaper while riding a bike – a rather singular skill, one would have thought – was banned in Woodbridge, Virginia on Sundays during times when church services were being held.
As far as interaction between the sexes is concerned, men in Ottumwa, Iowa, risked falling foul of the law if they winked at a woman while riding a bike, while in Oklahoma, the town of Lugert had a law preventing men sporting a moustache from going for a bike ride with a woman.
No cycling in swimming pools
Baldwin Park, California, regularly makes lists of bizarre cycling laws through a local ordinance that bans people from riding bikes in swimming pools – often prompting the observation of why on earth someone would want to get their bike, and themselves, wet?
In fact, there’s logic to the local legislation, and it dates back to the skateboarding and BMX boom of the late 70s when during the cooler months, kids would sneak into properties and use empty swimming pools to perform tricks (the city itself went on to build them a skate park).
Do Missouri cyclists really have to fit a 15-foot flagpole on their bikes?
Finally from the US, a bit of urban myth-busting. Back in 2016, a member of Missouri’s state legislature tabled a bill proposing that all cyclists riding on a “letter country road” – the US equivalent of B roads in the UK – should have to fly an orange flag from, get this, a 15-foot pole attached to their bike.
In response, one St Louis bike shop even rigged up a bike to highlight the ridiculousness of what was being proposed by then Representative Jay Houghton (who, it goes without saying was a Republican), as shown in the Twitter post below.
@cyclelicious -- the folks @StlBicycleWorks made a 15' pole today to show ridiculousness of MO bill. pic.twitter.com/FAjeCB0XvV
— Carrie Z (@velo_city) January 13, 2016
The bill, unsurprisingly, didn’t make it onto the statute books – but that hasn’t stopped the crackpot idea regularly featuring on lists of weird cycling laws since the idea was first floated.
Saudi Arabia relaxes ban on women cycling … slightly
The part the bike played in enabling women in western countries to assert their independence in the the late 19th and early 20th centuries in western countries is well-known, and in recent years we have also seen women in Middle Eastern countries including Iran take to the saddle – and social media – in defiance of the country’s ban on them riding bikes as a way of asserting their independence.
In Saudi Arabia, a total ban on women cycling was partially reversed as recently as 2013 but with strict conditions imposed – it is only permitted in recreational areas, under the supervision of a male relative, and riding must be done while wearing Islamic dress.
The country may be engaged in a sportswashing offensive right now, ranging from golf to football, but we’re not sure we’re going to see a women’s version of the Saudi Tour any time soon.
No topless riding in Thailand
On the subject of what not to wear (or rather, not wear), it may get humid in summer in Thailand, but forget riding a bike around without a t-shirt on if you want to avoid a fine, albeit one that for a western tourist is unlikely to trouble the bank balance too much, clocking in at under a fiver.
The law presumably was brought in as a response to tourists riding from the beach to the bar in a state of semi-undress, and as to what is acceptable as clothing on your upper body goes … well, the King of Thailand has been spotted in the past pedalling while wearing a rather fetching crop-top.
Mind you, he’s the King, so maybe that’s not a precedent to argue over with the Thai police if you get pulled over while riding with a skimpy top on, plus he was in Switzerland, not Thailand, at the time.
Great Britain: Bikes don’t have to have a bell, but cannot be sold without one (and your clipless pedals are felonious)
And finally, we’re back home for a couple of rules and regulations that may seem strange to people beyond these shores.
Since 1999, there has been no legal requirement for cyclists in Great Britain to have a bike bell fitted – although whether it’s a budget bike from a big box store or a sleek racing machine from a high-end dealer, the Pedal Bicycles (Safety) Regulations 2010 is that one has to be fitted when it is sold, and often the first bit of fettling a new bike is having the bell removed.
We mention Great Britain specifically because the rule applies to England, Scotland and Wales only – in Northern Ireland, which has its own version of the Highway Code, cyclists “MUST ensure a working bell or horn is fitted.”
It's also worth noting that legally, all bikes sold in Great Britain must be sold with wheel reflectors and "a red wide-angle rear reflector and amber reflectors front and rear on each pedal", and technically you have to have the pedal reflectors fitted outside of daylight hours - which may seem a little pointless now that you can pick up positively blinding rear bike lights for about twenty quid.
So indeed, if you've recently moved here and happen to spend several thousand pounds on a shiny new road racing bike, it's completely normal for the shop to throw in some of the very cheapest reflector-shod pedals and a bell with your purchase. It would have to be a particularly vindictive police officer to pursue the bike shop if they forgot, and it's rather unlikely you'll be penalised for not having pedal reflectors at night if you're running a decent set of lights.
Back to bells, and to a country that never seems to miss an opportunity to hit cyclists with stonking fines (most usually for riding without a helmet), riding your bike without a bell in Australia will land you a hefty fine – up to A$2,200 if you decide to challenge it in court.
Are you aware of any other bizarre pieces of bike-related legislation that you think deserve a place on our list? Let us know in the comments below…
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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This risks turning me into a hanger and flogger....
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This for me from cycling Santa this morning:
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In SE London, psychopath riders are the majority of people on bicycles Oh dear! another festive stealth anti-cyclist ☃️
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43 comments
Steady on chaps, we can't have civilised disagreement - what happened to the hive mind ?
I think I'm a bit on the fence on cycling whilst under the influence.
An ex copper at work told us drunk in charge of a bike was too much paperwork. His sergeant told him he had 30 seconds to get rid of the bike !
How badly did that German drunk student cycle to get a 15 year ban? Here he would have had to have killed at least a few royal family members to get such a ban if he was in a car.
Is there a word or two missing from the last paragraph - possibly the word "Australia"?
Sorry, sorted! Also added some bonus info on pedal reflectors, which on reflection (pardon the pun) we reckon is equally as eccentric as the law around bells...
And that's the unbelievable truth.
Simon, you managed to smuggle 2 truths past the readers.
I believe Poland has rowed back on the severity of its drink cycling laws, with offenders most likely to get a stiff fine or 14 days in jail for the most severe cases, but even at the height of the crusade I think it's probably unlikely that drunk cyclists were getting an average of eleven years in prison? Months maybe?
Personally (and I speak as a cyclist who is probably far too fond of the ale), and while I generally don't support more restrictions on cyclists, I would be all in favour of the UK falling more into line with some of the laws described here regarding drinking and cycling. It seems absurd that cyclists are exempt from being breathalysed and I would be perfectly happy to see the same sanctions applied to drink cycling as to drink driving, including licence suspensions. It shocks me sometimes to see otherwise perfectly sensible people, who wouldn't dream of driving drunk, saying, "I'm going to have a few pints so I'll take the bike." By all means ride your bike to the pub - I do - but if you're going to have more than a pint, push it home.
Not sure about that ... it is one of the ways that the law in this country acknowledges that a cyclist is essentially a pedestrian on wheels, and is not the driver of a motorised vehicle. By all means, sanction drunken cyclists in an appropriate way but if we start to blur that legal line we pretty much get into "giving the Daily Mail what they want" territory.
I agree, the cyclist is much closer to a pedestrian than a motorist in terms of danger to others. How many people have been killed by intoxicated cyclists? I believe if there are such accidents, the probabilities will be equal to be struck by lightning or attacked by angry cow.
The law in this country does not acknowledge "that a cyclist is essentially a pedestrian on wheels", cyclists are regarded as road vehicle users and are constrained by nearly all the road rules that apply to the drivers of motorised vehicles. Driving any vehicle, including a bicycle, on the highway whilst intoxicated is incredibly dangerous not only directly for the rider/driver and anyone they might hit but also for all those who may become involved in crashes attempting to avoid people who are not improper control of their conveyances. Cycling drunk is against the law, so why is it not "an appropriate way" of sanctioning them to apply the same testing and sanctions that apply to all other drunk vehicle users?
I can be accused of many things, probably quite rightly, but I don't think you can accuse me of being anti-cyclist or politically aligned with the Daily Mail!
The danger posed by drunk cyclists is minimal and to be honest, I'd rather that really drunk people just cycled home rather than swaying across pavements and attempting to interact with any other pedestrians. If they're too drunk to cycle, then they'll soon find out.
Unfortunately they might find out when they sway into the path of a car that swerves to avoid them and hits an innocent bystander, or when they get hit by a car, smash through the windscreen and the car crashes as well, injuring or killing the occupants. I can't quite believe that people like yourself, who generally exhibit a good deal of common sense, believe that it's okay and not really dangerous for people to be riding bicycles on the highway, mixing with cars and other high speed traffic, when they're pissed. It just isn't.
That's an unlikely hypothetical situation and one that could also easily happen if a sober cyclist had a mechanical issue and loses control. I don't see much benefit in getting police to lock up tipsy cyclists unless they're exceptionally drunk - they should treat them in a similar fashion to drunk pedestrians (who are also capable of swerving into the path of a car). There's laws that police can use to deal with drunken pedestrians and cyclists and I don't see much benefit in changing the law - the police should be able to continue using their judgement on which drunks need to be dealt with.
Research in America demonstrated that cyclists with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit for driving are six times more likely to be involved in a crash or other incident, and that 20% of cyclist fatalities involved the cyclist being over the legal alcohol limit. It's neither unlikely nor hypothetical, when I cycle home late (and sober!) on a Friday or Saturday night in London I see plenty of cyclists who are incapable through drink or drugs of controlling their machines (this has become a particular problem with Lime and other electric hire bikes I'm afraid), veering all over the road causing other road users to take evasive action. I haven't seen any cause a car crash yet but I have seen several crash into pedestrians crossing the road, fortunately without serious consequences. Riding a bicycle on the highway when drunk is a fantastically stupid thing to do and the police should have proper powers to prevent it.
Maybe it is a serious problem in some areas and if so, then the police do have powers to stop them.
I do consider that powered vehicles (whether via battery or ICE) are far more dangerous when someone has little control over their facilities as the feedback loop of being able to balance and pedal is disrupted, so they can still pick up speed by twisting the handlebar or pressing the button. In a similar fashion, it'd be tough for a drunk to go very quickly on a manually propelled scooter.
To be clear - I don't have any problem with obviously drunken cyclists being stopped and dealt with appropriately. I do have a problem with police being able to stop otherwise normal cyclists on the pretense of breathalysing them, but most likely due to the police not liking the look of the cyclist (wrong colour skin, or a bloke wearing lipstick etc).
Of course drunken car/ other motorised vehicle driving is far more dangerous, where have I suggested otherwise? That doesn't mean that drunk cycling isn't dangerous or that it can't cause serious incidents. The police don't, in reality, have the powers to stop drunken cyclists due to the fact that they can't be breathalysed, so unless someone is barely able to stand or form a coherent sentence it's very difficult to prove anything. There are four questions here, really, and if the answer to the first two, is it dangerous to cycle on the public highway when drunk and is it illegal to cycle on the public highway when drunk, is yes, which I believe is indubitably the case, then it's hard to see why the answer to the other two questions, should the police be able to breathalyse cyclists and should cyclists have to adhere to the same alcohol limits as drivers, is no.
It's a question of degree of danger.
If the police don't have powers to breathalyse cyclists, presumably they also don't have powers to breathalyse pedestrians? That doesn't seem to be an issue though, as the police can use catch-all laws such as disturbing the peace (or whatever the actual law is). As there isn't a stated maximum level of blood-alcohol for either walking or cycling, it makes some kind of sense that the police shouldn't have much requirement for measuring intoxication - they should be able to use their judgement so that a ped or cyclist weaving across a busy road can be detained due to their obvious intoxication.
In answer to your first two questions:
Is it dangerous to cycle on the public highway when drunk? It depends very much on the nature of the road and the degree of intoxication. Some people would consider riding a bike at all on some roads to be dangerous even when the cyclist is sober.
Is it illegal to cycle on the public highway when drunk? Depends on how "drunk" is defined, but yes it's generally illegal to be out in public when drunk whether on a bike or not.
Breathalysing only makes sense when there is a stated maximum measurable limit, so I think your question should be whether a national cycling blood-alcohol limit should be introduced (and thus allow police to breathalyse). I don't think it's worthwhile introducing it as there's much better targets for the police to be pursuing if they want to reduce dangerous traffic. I can't see any major benefit to it, but it could be abused by racist/sexist police.
As I said above, yes I think the drink/drive limit for cycling should be the same as that for driving a motorised vehicle. If you look at the figures I quoted above regarding likelihood of accidents I believe it is entirely worthwhile introducing deterrents to cycling drunk.
I don't feel your comparison to pedestrians is apposite, pedestrians aren't generally mixing with vehicles doing 30mph downhill, are they? Some cyclists will be and I really can't see why it's at all contentious to advocate measures to dissuade them from being drunk when doing so.
I just don't see that it would make any real world difference. If a cyclist is happy to be going 30mph downhill when drunk, then either they have competent bike handling skills when drunk or they'll very quickly discover that they don't. I can't see that legislation would have much bearing on their decision making.
(Incidentally, the figures you described don't really paint a full picture as there's no comparison to base-levels of drunken cyclists that don't get involved in collisions - maybe some sources would flesh out the details).
So you don't think that knowing that if the police catch you riding drunk they can breathalyse you and if you're over the limit you will face the same criminal penalties as a drunk driver, including points on your driving licence, will deter anybody? When the breathalyser was introduced to the UK in 1968 it immediately slashed drink-driving, with 1,152 fewer road deaths and 11,177 fewer serious injuries. Why would the introduction of a breathalyser for cyclists not have the same deterrent effect?
This cyclist who will "very quickly discover that they don't [have the capacity to cycle downhill at 30 mph when drunk]", how will they find that out? By crashing, and if other vehicles are driving around them there's every chance that they will have to take evasive action, increasing the chance that they will injure somebody else. It's not a victimless crime where only the drunk cyclist has a chance of being killed or injured.
I'd consider that having the same penalties for drunk cycling and drunk driving would be entirely missing the point of the danger that both activities entail. Drunk cycling is by its very nature self limiting due to the need to keep balanced and is also far less likely to hurt someone else.
Also, people are not so motivated by penalties as they are by the chance of them getting caught. If we want to drastically reduce drunk cycling, then getting police to hang around outside pubs would be more effective than introducing lengthy prison terms.
Personally, I'd much rather that people got on their bike after a couple of drinks than get in a car - by having both activities attract the same penalties, it would mean that there's no incentive for people to take a bike to the pub iinstead of their car. That would be the opposite of improving road safety.
By that logic drunk motorcyclists doing 20mph shouldn't face the same penalties as drunk car drivers.
And at the moment there is virtually no chance of a drunk cyclist being caught because the police know there's no point in stopping them because they can refuse to be breathalysed. If they knew that they could be breathalysed and so were more likely to be caught, that would be a deterrent.
I would be well up for substantial prison terms for drink drivers in this country but it's virtually impossible to be sent to prison for drink-driving unless you cause an incident that harms someone, and even then...
I just don't get this "oh it's not as bad so allow it" argument. Murder is worse than GBH, shall we ignore GBH? Cycling drunk is highly dangerous, very stupid and has the potential to cause death and serious injuries not just for the cyclist but for innocent bystanders. It's also illegal.
Feel free to respond of course but I think I'll leave it there, we're clearly not going to agree.
Following our discussion, I'm now curious as to how often a major RTC (as in a KSI) was caused by a drunken cyclist. I can't recall seeing any such report and from a quick web search, all I can find is drunk drivers hitting cyclists.
(Not intending this to be a continuation of our discussion - just curious as to the actual size of the problem)
I can't find any data either, but wouldn't it be quite likely that incidents caused by drunken cyclists often don't end up recorded as someone swerves round the unsteady cyclist and hits something else, with the cyclist riding off oblivious? I know that's pure speculation but seems likely to me, I've had a couple of near-croppers when I've tried to pass a pissed-up rider who's swerved across me...it's just not a good idea to have anyone operating machinery on the road in an unfit condition, manual or powered, in my opinion! All the best.
Just to reply to this paragraph which wasn't there when I originally replied, I absolutely agree that the police should have to justify their reasons for stopping and breathalysing a cyclist in great detail and should face serious sanctions if it is shown that it was a vexatious stop on the grounds of race, sexuality et cetera. The prevalence of in-car and body worn cameras should help to establish whether or not a cyclist's riding was sufficiently bad legitimately to give rise to the suspicion that they were under the influence.
I agree that operating anything while gin-happy is a bad idea. In fact, it goes even further:
Friends don't let friends walk drunk.
(America though - environment may be even more dangerous than the UK because more car...)
There could be some mitigation in having separate, high-quality infra. After some indiscretions in my youth (involving parked cars, ditches...) I became totally "don't cycle after even one beer" for time (I'm a cheap date). I've broken that rule on occasion where I could use the completely separate North Edinburgh paths (normally pretty empty at night also) to return home. It just "felt safer". (No, that's not an excuse...)
Which allegedly happens an awful lot in Australia and the US in relation to helmet laws...
I'm sure it also happens an awful lot in those countries in relation to speeding laws, drink-driving laws for motor vehicles, "looking at me in a funny way" and so on. That's an argument for better training, monitoring of and sanctioning the police where approriate (which I believe is massively necessary in the UK), not for not imposing or doing away with laws because the police might abuse them.
(This is in no way supporting compulsory lid laws, which I don't)
Exactly. There's enough bias introduced by mainstream media against cyclists already, so I think we need to carefully evaluate the pros and cons of introducing new laws for cyclists.
Drunk cyclists can cause enormous harm without any need for hypothetical crashing through windscreens to kill innocent car drivers. If you accept that a drunk cyclist is more likely to be involved in a collision with a vehicle then that's enough to have massive potential impacts, that's not something you just brush off however blameless you are. It doesn't involve a cyclist but I have a friend who many years ago (30 plus) was the passenger in a vehicle blamelessly involved in a collision with a red light jumping car driver. The car driver unfortunately died at the scene. The driver of the other vehicle had an immediate mental breakdown as a result. My friend, the passenger, was left to pick up the bits and was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD , had to give up work and still suffers from horrendous flashbacks despite having no physical injuries at the time. The economic impact of them retiring was significant, the mental welfare impact has been huge on them and their family. Nobody should be on the roads whilst under the influence of drink or drugs.
I agree to your overall point. Just make the same point as I raised in response to with Ashley Neal's tale of the (I don't doubt) drastic effects on a wider group of people when a driver "innocently killed" someone else.
The "impossible" / "fantasy" truth.
If you don't want the risk of killing someone while driving and it not being your fault ("there was literally nothing they could do...")
...don't drive.
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