{"id":412,"date":"2018-02-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baronedefensefirm.lawblogger.net\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/"},"modified":"2025-01-08T14:39:01","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T18:39:01","slug":"can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states contains a sufficiently broad definition of the term \u201coperate.\u201d\u00a0 Public safety is likely to be the paramount concern of the courts as they grapple with this important issue.\u00a0 It is also possible that state legislatures will step in with laws to cover the various scenarios that will arise in the era of autonomous driving.<\/p>\n<p>It remains to be seen if this issue will be addressed by our legislatures before or after autonomous vehicles become common.\u00a0 History has shown that lawmaking lags technology, so it seems likely that various test cases will arise around the country before state legislatures address this issue.\u00a0 Baring specific legislation, courts in the various states will apply the existing common law, and this will dictate their decision.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, relative to non-autonomous vehicles, most states have very broad definitions of the term \u201coperate[i]\u201d such that in most of the circumstances that arise with non-autonomous vehicles, the occupant will be found to be \u201coperating\u201d even if they are not literally \u201cdriving.\u201d This broad definition arose in case law around the county to cover situations where a traditional definition of operating would otherwise fail, such as those cases involving intoxicated occupants found sleeping inside their vehicles, or in other circumstances where the vehicle is not moving. This drunk operation case law will be discussed in some detail below.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving?\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states contains a sufficiently broad definition of the term \u201coperate.\u201d\u00a0 Public safety is likely to be the paramount concern of the courts as they grapple with this important issue.\u00a0 It is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-owi"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving? | Barone Defense Firm<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states &#8212; February 7, 2018\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving? | Barone Defense Firm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states &#8212; February 7, 2018\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Patrick Barone\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving? | Barone Defense Firm","description":"Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states &#8212; February 7, 2018","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving? | Barone Defense Firm","twitter_description":"Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states &#8212; February 7, 2018","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Patrick Barone","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/","url":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/","name":"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving? | Barone Defense Firm","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-02-07T04:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2025-01-08T18:39:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/da00f897e195cfccca02fe556b53136f"},"description":"Existing law may be sufficient to convict an intoxicated occupant of an autonomous vehicle of drunk driving. This is because the law in most states &#8212; February 7, 2018","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/can-occupant-of-autonomous-vehicle-be-found-guilty-of-drunk-driving\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Can Occupant of Autonomous Vehicle Be Found Guilty of Drunk Driving?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/","name":"Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog","description":"Published by Michigan Criminal Defense Attorney \u2014 Barone Defense Firm","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/da00f897e195cfccca02fe556b53136f","name":"Patrick Barone","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/72accf40078879330cdb7caae27be7ad00db64cb0555444fefa6e1a762116037?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/72accf40078879330cdb7caae27be7ad00db64cb0555444fefa6e1a762116037?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Patrick Barone"}}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3645,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/3645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baronedefensefirm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}