This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: When Anything Becomes a Motor Vehicle
My favorite thing on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays is cases that happened in my field of practice, that is impaired driving law. I love defending impaired driving cases. I’ve been doing it for years, and each case is different. Somehow I’m always enthusiastic about reading DUI files. Even better this week, our weird and wacky stories start with one from right here in BC. I went to the Aqua concert recently. They’re the band that sings the song “Barbie Girl”. Around the same time, there was a fellow stopped driving a Barbie Jeep. Let’s start there.
In a Barbie world…
The RCMP in Prince George made an unusual impaired driving arrest on September 5th. Not unusual because the person provided a sample apparently with a prohibited blood alcohol concentration. But unusual because he was a large man and he was driving down a main road in a child-size pink motorized Barbie Jeep. How he managed to get into the Barbie Jeep is as yet unexplained. But when interviewed, this fellow, Kasper Lincoln, seemed to think that it was all kind of funny. And it is. I gather from the description of the documents he was issued that he has had previous impaired driving incidents. In this case, it seems he was probably only putting himself at risk by driving on a high-traffic route.
A couple of things to note: In BC, you cannot operate a motor vehicle without a licence and insurance. There are exceptions, and there may be some exemption in the Motor Vehicle Act depending on what they charge him with. But under the Criminal Code, this would certainly be classified as a conveyance. Unfortunate for Mr. Lincoln, he’s likely facing a criminal charge for this. One hopes the Crown will exercise some discretion so he doesn’t end up with a criminal record for something so darn funny.
Florida man on a riding mower
DUIs on riding mowers are not that unusual in the United States. I’ve been monitoring this for well over a decade, and it seems at least once a year someone gets a DUI on a riding mower. What can be unusual is where the person decided to ride their riding mower. This week we turn to an incident in Florida where just this last July a fellow by the name of Christopher Spain was arrested visibly impaired, driving a riding mower not on a sidewalk or a side street but rather on the Suncoast Parkway, a busy toll road.
In his photo taken upon arrest, Mr. Spain certainly looks like a Florida man. Apparently, he was unable to perform field sobriety tests. His lawnmower looked quite sporty, and one would imagine that it could probably get up to 5-10 miles per hour. In any event, he was released on a bond and likely has to appear in front of a judge sometime soon for driving his riding mower along a toll highway.
The famous motorized recliner
This goes back a few years, but it’s still one of my favorite DUI-in-unlikely-vehicle stories. Back in 2009, a fellow named Dennis LeRoy Anderson of Proctor, Minnesota, constructed himself a motorized recliner. Apparently, he used a lawnmower engine, created a steering wheel, installed a stereo and cup holders into a recliner, creating a fully motorized chair that could reach 32 kilometers per hour.
One evening, after drinking 8-9 beers at a bar, he drove it into a parked car and was arrested with a blood alcohol concentration of 290 mg/100ml. Fascinating to me is that he managed to drive the recliner around for a while without being stopped. It was only the collision that led to the investigation. He was convicted and sentenced to 180 days (part of which was served in the community) and fined $2,000.
It was a big news story when this happened, and it became a new story again when the state auctioned off the chair, which they had seized from him, I suppose as an instrument of the crime.
Impaired Driving on the Strangest of Rides
Somehow motorized recliners make perfect sense to me. I recall seeing someone who created a motorized living room with a lamp, a sofa, and a television. It seems an unnecessary restriction on our freedom that we cannot drive motorized recliners. Or maybe not. In any event, no matter what strange or very strange vehicle you decide to drive, please do not drive it when you are impaired. And if you have any trouble with the police in any way connected to driving, give me a call. I’m always looking for another interesting impaired driving case to sink my teeth into. See you next week for another exciting episode of Weird and Wacky Wednesdays.
