Here’s a hypothetical for whatever jurisdiction(s) you might be familiar with.
Joe and Bill are (possibly soon to be ex) friends.
Joe invites Bill over for dinner, and Bill drinks a lot, so much, in fact, that he is intoxicated enough that if he got behind the wheel of a car and drove on a public street, he would be guilty of DUI.
Joe draws Bill toward a computer, and tells Bill that he would like Bill to try a (video game/simulator/virtual world) involving a driving “simulation”. Bill agrees, and gets behind the computer and tries to “play”. Unbeknownst to Bill, he is not, in fact, playing a video game or inside a virtual world, but he is in fact controlling a robot car operating on the public streets. Assume that a reasonably educated sober person who does not have a lot of experience in video gaming could be fooled into believing that it was a video game - it’s that good (direct deceit as in the example, and/or by Occam’s Razor and/or Duck Test).
Joe is not legally intoxicated and has a valid driver’s license.
Has Bill commited DUI? DUI seems to be treated in some cases as a strict liability offense - in many cases it is no defense that you didn’t know you were drunk. But is it a defense that you had no idea (and, reasonably, couldn’t have) that you were driving at all?
What is Joe guilty of? Aiding and Abeting? Solicitation? Reckless Endangerment? Reckless Driving? Remember that he is sober.
Bill is guilty of nothing other than having Joe as a friend.
Joe, on the other hand, even assuming the robot vehicle cause no injury or damage, will probably be at the mercy of the DA for public endangerment. Traffic court will most likely seek their piece of the pie as well as they look to answer to what will be a public outcry of anger/shock.
If there is third party injury/property damage, Joe will become familiar will civil court as well.
Bill may experience some public humiliation because now the world knows he enjoys getting shitfaced so to save face he’ll probably sue Joe over a host of real and/or imagined maladies as a result of Joe placing him in that situation.
(allusion to a famous science fiction novel was intentional)
But if the DA wanted to press charges against Bill for DUI (as he did, in fact, operate the vehicle), what would be his defense? Would he say that he was not “driving” within the definition of the law as he had no conscious knowledge of the true nature of his acts, and could not reasonably be expected to have them even if sober, or what?
Assume that all the “facts” of the case are discovered by the police and that all evidence is admissible (e.g. evidence that the car was remote controlled from the computer operated by the defendant is reliable and admissible in criminal court).
If he can be acquitted based on anything other than insufficient evidence of guilt or a procedural irregularity, then it should stand to reason that DUI, as a criminal offense, includes a mental element/ mens rea. What is that mental element, exactly?
The topic of mens rea as to drunk driving is a mess. Many legislatures and courts treat it, expressly or impliedly, as a strict liability offense, even though it is rare in US law for an offense that carries such severe penalties to be strict liability.
Some courts struggle to place it in the old general vs. specific intent context of criminal law, arguing that one need only have a general intent to drink and a general intent to drive, and not a specific intent to drive drunk. That framework arguably fails, however, to account for cases where someone is arrested for DUI for sleeping in the car on the roadside, with the keys in the ignition but the motor off.
Some courts recognize a defense of involuntary intoxication, which doesn’t fit with a strict liability view. The burden of proof is placed on the defendant. Your hypothetical would raise a similar sort of defense – not involuntary intoxication, but involuntary operation of the vehicle.
Here’s an article discussing some of the mens rea issues, albeit from a perspective opposing strict liability.