If you haven’t heard of Pedal Pub before, you probably don’t live in one of the 3 cities that allows human powered carts to drive around cities while serving alcohol to the people that are pedaling. While driving through downtown St. Paul on Sunday I witnessed a Pedal Pub going from the right hand land a crossed another lane into the left hand turn lane. This is one incident that made me look into how crazy it actually is that they allow Pedal Pubs to actually exist and function. Here are my main two issues.
- They are allowed to drive in the street with no lights and only a slow moving vehicle sign.
- They are allowed to drive on walking and bike paths.
What bothers me about these two things is that they are really large clunky machines to be riding next to pedestrians and could possibly harm or kill someone due to a split second of driver error when navigating through a tourist area being powered by drunks, which in my opinion doesn’t seem safe. They won’t let you ride a motorized scooter down a bike path why one of these things?
Then on the other hand they aren’t quite up to the speed that cars and bicycles are, offering a dangerous relatively slow moving target less than 15 mph that doesn’t signal or offer any clues about their movements. Bicycles at least are supposed to use hand gestures. When they run on the roads they are usually in downtown areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul offering the most conflicts with cars and blocking the most traffic possible while acting as a portable roadblock.
Have you ever been on a Pedal Pub? Does the fun for a small group of people outweigh the safety of the occupants or other people while causing unnecessary congestion so a private company can turn a buck?
You’re wrong… they do have lights, and they have to obey traffic laws. They have an LED lighting system powered by an onboard battery. You are correct, however, if you’ve seen them signal by hand, that the onboard “pilot” who is provided by the pedal pub company (and distinctly NOT the bartender) likes to conserve the battery for other things, like the radio, instead of using it for the onboard lights…
I usually run into them in either downtown St. Paul or Downtown Minneapolis during the busiest part of the day. On top of that usually driving through construction to boot. All the while they drive these like they are going the same speed as the rest of the traffic cutting a crossed multiple lanes with no noticeable indications.