This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: No Car Required
People tend to think impaired driving is something that only happens behind the wheel of a car. It is one of the most common misconceptions I run into. The Criminal Code does not use the word car. It uses the word conveyance, and it defines a conveyance as a motor vehicle, a vessel, an aircraft, or railway equipment. That is a very wide net. If it carries you from one place to another, the impaired driving laws are almost certainly paying attention.
I tell clients this all the time and they rarely believe me until they meet someone it happened to. So this week I went looking for the people it happened to. All three of the main stories come from Ontario, all three charges were laid by the OPP, and not one of them involves a car. What they share is a person who climbed onto something conveyance after a few too many and learned that the law does not care how many wheels you have. Or whether you have any wheels at all.
Eighty Plus on an E-Scooter
We start in Trenton. On the evening of Sunday, April 5, 2026, the Quinte West OPP conducted a traffic stop on Marmora Street. The twist is that the vehicle they pulled over was an electric scooter. The operator was investigated for impaired driving and taken back to the detachment for testing.
David Hanna, a 66 year old Quinte West resident, was charged with impaired operation and having a blood alcohol concentration prohibited in law. He was released with a court date in Belleville. He also lost his licence for ninety days.
Here is the part people find hardest to accept: you do not need a driver’s licence to ride an e-scooter, but you can still lose your driver’s licence for riding one while impaired. For the purposes of these charges, the scooter is a motor vehicle. A lot of people have talked themselves onto an e-scooter at the end of the night precisely because they were sure it did not count. They are wrong.
Man Overboard on Rice Lake
Our second story moves from the pavement to the water, where things turned a little more dramatic. On May 26, 2026, shortly before five in the afternoon, emergency services were called to Rice Lake after the lone operator of a personal watercraft fell in and could not be found. Local residents pulled the watercraft out of the water and kept searching for its driver.
The operator was eventually located on land, over in the Township of Hamilton, and taken to hospital. After officers had a conversation with him, a different kind of investigation began. A 56 year old Bewdley resident was charged with impaired operation by alcohol and drugs and is due in Cobourg court in July.
A personal watercraft is not a motor vehicle. It is a vessel, which is the next word in that Criminal Code definition. The result is exactly the same. With boating season now upon us, this is the one I would ask people to keep in mind. A Sea-Doo feels like a toy. The charge that comes with operating one impaired is not a toy, and it carries the same weight as the charge you would face in a car.
Impaired on the Ice
For the third story we go back to the start of the year and out onto the lakes again, because in this country the lakes stay useful in every season. On Sunday, January 4, 2026, North Bay OPP officers were running an evening patrol on the ice of Lake Nipissing when they stopped a snowmobile. The operator had been drinking.
Cody Bell, 31, of Mississauga, was charged with operation while impaired by alcohol. He was given a court date in North Bay and a ninety day licence suspension to go with it.
I include this one to make a point about the calendar. The scooter was spring, the watercraft was nearly summer, and the snowmobile was the dead of winter. There is no off-season for this. Canadians are an inventive people, and we will find a motorized way to get from the party to home in any weather. The OPP, unfortunately for these three, are also out in any weather.
One More, From South of the Border
I will leave you with the week’s strangest stop, which does involve a car, so it does not quite fit the theme, but it was too good to skip. In Vernon, Connecticut, an officer pulled over a driver for erratic driving and signs of impairment. The driver failed the roadside tests and was arrested. Then officers searched the trunk and found a homemade cannon.
There is no word yet on what the cannon was for. I will only observe that of all the people in this week’s column, the one who actually had a car is the one who managed to have the weirdest night of the bunch.
The lesson, in all four cases, is an old one. If it can move you and you are operating it, assume you cannot do it while impaired.
See you next week.
