DISCLAIMERS: You are not my lawyer, I am not your client, not seeking legal advice, blah blah blah.
If you get a DUI and the “vehicle” you’re driving isn’t a street-legal motor vehicle (say, a horse, or a bicycle, or a riding lawn mower), is your right to drive a motor vehicle impacted? Like, could I get a DUI for riding Old Nanny through town while drunk but still not lose my driver’s license?
For driving a lawn mower: yes.
IIRC, some lady in Idaho got popped for driving a horse while intoxicated.
I’m sure it depends on the state. In MN, there are boating while intoxicated and snowmobiling while intoxicated laws that can affect your drivers (car) license if convicted.
The horse or the lady?
afaik, horses and horse-drawn vehicles (e.g. buggies, wagons) are street legal vehicles on most US roads (in Virginia, they can legally be used anywhere but controlled access highways like I-95), they just aren’t street legal “motor” vehicles. Generally, only areas commonly inhabited by the Amish will have the practical infrastructure to make it easy to use these vehicles, but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal elsewhere. Think about it - at one time these were the most common vehicles and cars came later. Legislatures would have had to specifically make time to draft and pass a law specifically banning horses on public streets as of a specific date.
I’ve seen lots of signs in the Southwest stating that animal-powered vehicles are forbidden from using the freeway.
so that means there’s enough out there that signs were needed. Also it neatly prohibits bicycles.
Depends on the state. In mine, the law applies to motor vehicles. So you can ride your horse as drunk as you like. (As long as the horse isn’t drunk.)
There was a case in Tombstone, Arizona in which the local Sheriff of the county was arrested while DUI on a horse. Anyone familiar with Tombstone will understand that the arrest was politically motivated. If I am not mistaken, the Sheriff won on appeal with the argument that the horse was not a vehicle and he was not a driver based on the fact that the horse was self guided. Basically, the horse if released from the location in town would go to the Sheriff’s home with or without the Sheriff onboard; the horse was essentially the driver.
Again, if my memory serves correctly, the Arizona appeals court essentially ruled that the horse was the driver and since the horse was not DUI, the passenger’s state was irrelevant.
STATE specific;
For instance, a mounted bicyclist can get a DUI, State v. Shepard, 1 Ohio App.3d 104, 439 N.E.2d 920 (1st Dist. Hamilton County 1981), whereas a dismounted bicyclist is a pedestrian and not subject to a DUI. Jones v. Santel, 164 Ohio St. 93, 128 N.E.2d 36 (1955). You can even be convicted if you are riding your kids bicycle that is way too small for you and that can only be ridden with great difficulty. State v. Jones, 2008-Ohio-304 (Ohio Ct. App. 4th Dist. Lawrence County 2008).
You can get an OVI on a snowmobile State v. Moran, 1998 WL 281375 (Ohio Ct. App. 9th Dist. Wayne County 1998), a motorized bar stool and a motorized lazy boy. You can get a drunk driving conviction on a golf cart State v. Sanchez, 1991 WL 132506 (Ohio Ct. App. 6th Dist. Ottawa County) and a farm tractor Wauseon v. Badenhop, 9 Ohio St. 3d 152, 459 N.E.2d 867 (1984), but not a horse! In State v. Euton, 77 Ohio Misc. 2d 19, 665 N.E.2d 867 (1984), the Portsmouth Municipal Court ruled that a horse was not a vehicle for purposes of the Ohio DUI statute, R.C. 4511.19. So if you get pulled over for OVI, make sure your on a horse
http://www.daytondui.com/blog/tag/dui-on-horse/
I tried to find a cite for the Tombstone case I cited, but cannot locate anything online and thus, I suspect my memory to be incorrect. However, in Arizona, anything without a motor is not a vehicle and thus, you cannot get a DUI on a horse. This appears to be jurisdictionally specific; some jurisdictions will hold a horse to be a vehicle just as a bicycle.
I knew someone who was convicted of DUI while riding an ATV (while drunk) on the street. He then lost his job as a FedEx driver, couldn’t make child support payments as a result, etc. Really messed him up.
A relative of my neighbor’s was arrested for driving an ATV on my neighbor’s lawn (and I think several other neighborhood lawns, which is why the police were called) while drunk.
In Arizona, a bicycle is not a vehicle?
You can’t ride it in the street? You must ride on the sidewalk? No need to obey vehicle speed limits?
How is the infrastructure different in Amish areas to accommodate horse-drawn vehicles? All you need is a road and the roads I’ve been on in Amish country were no different than the roads in my home area.
As others have said it depends on your state. In NJ it specifically says motor vehicle. It must have a motor. So a horse or a bicycle does not count. And in New Jersey it is one of the motor vehicle statutes that can be enforced on private property.
It seems to me that the question the OP is asking isn’t so much whether you can get a DUI while driving/riding something other than a highway-legal vehicle (which seems to be the question everyone is answering), but whether the consequences applied to your driver’s license would be the same as if you’d been caught in a car.
I’d guess they probably would be, although perhaps if you’re somewhere that judges still have a large amount of leeway in DUI sentencing you might get off a little lighter. How your car insurance company would view it is another issue, although I imagine they probably wouldn’t be very forgiving either.
The bar stool guy in Ohio had his license suspended for an additional year.
It seems, though, that such a thing goes against the spirit of a DL suspension for DUI. The idea is that a driver’s license is a privilege not to be abused. By operating a car while you are drunk, you have abused that privilege and we will take away that license for a little while as punishment.
But if you are driving a bicycle, a lawn tractor or anything else not requiring a driver’s license to operate, there is no underlying privilege that you are abusing (other than the law itself, which there are punishments for) and to take away a driver’s license when the bad activity you are doing is not associated with that license seems to lose its logical connection.
I got a DUI on an ATV two months ago and have an “administrative hearing” in a week on whether I lose my License. My lawyer says no. This is in Kansas. I will post back in a week.