Victoria is unlikely to legislate against drink-riding, despite research finding more than 7 per cent of the state's seriously injured cyclists were intoxicated.

New research from The Alfred Hospital and Monash University, published in the journal Emergency Medicine Australasia, found intoxication was common among pedestrians and cyclists who were seriously injured in Victorian road accidents.

Emergency and trauma specialist Associate Professor Biswadev Mitra and his team looked at data from adult major trauma centres in Victoria from 2009 to 2014.

They analysed the records of all 1,323 patients admitted after being involved in a road crash as a non-motorised road user.

Severely injured patients were routinely blood-tested for alcohol, allowing the researchers to determine exactly how many of those were intoxicated.

"Among pushbike cyclists who are severely injured in Victoria, about one in 10 are intoxicated," Dr Mitra told 774 ABC Melbourne's Red Symons.

"That compares to about one in four pedestrians."

Drunk cyclists not dying, minister says

Police Minister Lisa Neville said she had discussed the research with Doug Fryer, the Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing.

"At the moment the statistics don't indicate that those cyclists who might be riding home at night after having a few drinks are in any way contributing to the road toll," she told 774 ABC Melbourne's Jon Faine.

"The deaths from cyclists, which are about five to six a year, are not that group of cyclists but those that are serious, more professional bike riders.

"They're not drunk, they're not over the limit."

She said that while drunk cyclists might injure themselves, legislating to stop drink-riding may have unintended consequences.

"We need to be careful that we don't end up with a policy outcome that actually sees more people [drunk] behind a wheel, which is where we'd get deaths and we'd get injuries," she said.

But Dr Mitra said riding a bicycle was "absolutely not" a safer alternative to driving a car while drunk.

"If you're under the influence of alcohol, doing neither of those things is safe — in fact, even probably walking on a busy road is not safe either."

He said it was up to politicians and police to decide how to tackle the issue.

"It's beyond our research to suggest what should be done. We're just here to put forward the public health message that drinking and riding is not a safe thing to do."