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mnhtnbb

(33,276 posts)
12. The issue is about risk taking.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 02:40 PM
23 hrs ago

It's not about a DUI for bike riders.

In bike vs car, the car will win every time. The brothers chose to ride bikes--drunk--at night on a road where there was no protection from vehicles. It wouldn't take a drunk driver to injure/kill them. Someone texting could do it. An older person with failing night vision could not see them. A car full of teenagers listening to music and out for a drive could not see a stop sign and crash into them. A couple getting lovey dovey could be distracted and swerve into them. One of them could not see a rock or pothole, hit it and go flying over the handlebars into an oncoming vehicle. There are any number of ways they could have been hurt/killed by riding their bikes at night on that road. It was risky. They rolled the dice and lost. Would they have been riding their bikes that night if they weren't drunk? Probably not.
The point is that their alcohol consumption played a part in them being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It does not absolve the drunk driver. But to ignore the role that alcohol played in the decision they made is to suggest that alcohol does not impair judgement in ways that don't have anything to do with driving. It does.

Those kids growing up without a father need to know that there was more to the accident than a drunk driver hit their dad and uncle while they were riding their bikes. The fact that their father and uncle were drunk, too, should not be ignored, because it may have contributed to them making a poor decision which did not adequately take into consideration the danger of riding bikes at night on that road.

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