If you think riding your Bird e-scooter instead of driving your car home will save you from DUI laws, sober up and think again. According to TMZ, a 25-year-old man was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Santa Monica, California last weekend when he attempted to scoot by the Los Angeles police on the sidewalk allegedly inebriated.
When police noticed the unmistakable stench of alcohol and attempted to breathalyze the man, he refused. After allegedly failing a field sobriety test, he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor DUI.
Bird scooters are electric vehicles, and as such require you to operate them on the street. Seeing a man take to the sidewalks instead of the street could be what motivated the LAPD to stop him in the first place, with the ensuing smell of alcohol leading to a suspicion that the man was operating his scooter under the influence.
The Santa Monica-based electric scooter-share company has a rental cost of a dollar and 15 cents for each additional minute. And while Bird scooters admittedly resemble the Razor scooters for kids and seem like innocuous, fun ways to navigate your city, these are motorized vehicles and need to be operated with the same kind of respect for the wellbeing of others as cars and motorcycles. The company even states that it’s illegal to use them under the influence in its user agreement.
Scoot safely and responsibly.
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