Beer Bike: Good Times Or ‘Uncontrolled Projectile?’

by dutchamsterdam.nl via Flickr

Despite its long and harmonious history of bicycling and substance abuse,  Amsterdam is experiencing a conflict between the two.

The source of consternation is the beer bike, on which 10 or more people sit around a bar, drinking beer and pedaling to power a contraption steered by a designated driver. Despite the ostensible sobriety of the driver, the bikes have been involved in two recent accidents, Reuters reports, prompting a motorcyclist to call the one that hit him “an uncontrolled projectile.”

I am not against bicycles or crowds of drunks, but it does seem a little risky to combine the two. Amsterdam is already so bike-centric that a perfectly sober grandmother will run you down with her Schwinn if you step in her path. What a dozen British tourists with several pints in them might do is not something that bears contemplation.

While I would very much like to go on a beer bike tour, it may be one of those things that a principled traveler ought to foreswear for the public good. Rats.