Brantford e-bike rider crashes while drunk—twice

Crash your e-bike once, shame on you. Crash your e-bike twice—like, within a few minutes of the first crash, and also while drunk—double shame on you.

A 55-year-old Brantford man is feeling that shame this week after he lost control of his e-bike on Grandview Street and collided with a tree, sometime around 8 p.m. on Monday. You might be tempted to applaud the man’s apparently persistent, get-back-on-that-horse attitude, knowing that he mounted up again and kept going, but then there’s what happened barely metres later. Turning on to Sydenham Street, the driver lost control again, ran straight into a parked car and fell to the ground.

And that’s definitely where the story stops being funny.

Police, arriving at the scene, said that the man showed “signs of impairment,” Brant News reported. Administered two sobriety tests, the man blew well over the blood-alcohol limit. The first registered 144 milligrams; the second, 156. With that second reading, the man was found to be way, way over the legal limit of 80 mg—almost double. Charged with impaired driving, the driver—a resident of St. George Street, Brant News added—was released on the condition that he appear in court.

The parked car was fine. The e-bike, though, wasn’t exactly unscathed. Both the front wheel and the handlebars were damaged.