I can understand the police citing him for disorderly conduct if his raft bumps into something, or public intoxication, since the river itself is public land. An inflatable raft honestly can’t do much significant damage, most likely just some scratches on the finish of somebody’s wood paneled speedboat.  Swerving to avoid a collision on the water isn’t likely to cause an accident, and anyone swimming in the river where the current is fast enough that they’d be hurt if a raft bumps them is just stupid.  You shouldn’t swim at all where the current is fast enough to accelerate a raft to ramming speed.

I also just read the statute quoted in your link, It seems too broad.  By its language, a vessel might be a pair of water-wings, an inner-tube, a pair of swimming flippers or your swim-trunks when they trap a fart.

But the United States has had a president arrested for drunk driving a horse.. President Ulysses S Grant (yeah it was almost 150 years ago, but still)

I agree that it could be dangerous, but I think “shoes on pavement” should be allowed when you’re drunk.

But Cotton Mather disagrees, and that is ultimately what counts.

Why would the term fail when it comes to cars, particularly since it isn’t being lumped with extra meaning it doesn’t deserve? It has an easier job relating to piloting a car. Rides don’t have to be passive; you tell a horse where to go for instance. And if you’re happy to apply the term to a bike, what am I not doing on the bike I’m doing in a car?

Cyclists drive, motorists ride and that’s an end of it. Every fucker plainly has it back to front except me.

I do believe a lot of jurisdictions rather strongly regulate the carrying of firearms in public, sober or drunk, so this is a bit of a straw man argument anyway.

…. is irrelevant.  The legal definition of a vehicle is all that matters here.  That’s why many things *have* a legal definition, so there is less confusion and subjectivity about rather critical matters.

A professional writer should know that the precise meaning of words is very important and the “Humpty Dumpty” school of definitions won’t hack it on a personal level. (“..a word means precisely what I choose it to mean…”

“Freedom” is not the same as “liberty” despite their being used almost interchangeably and “well-regulated” as in the Second Amendment does not mean what most people think it means.

But yes, absolutely, beyond any semblance of a doubt, it is very, very dangerous to ride a horse over vehicle-traveled roads while you are drunk. Dangerous for you, dangerous for the horse, and dangerous for any vehicles that might hit you (or swerve to avoid hitting you).

Hell, it’s a fairly chancy proposition to ride sober on most public roads. You have to have your head on a swivel, you have to deal with the reactions of cars driven by people who weren’t expecting horses, and you have to be ready for the possibility that your horse, which has ignored the last 10,000 cars that went zipping by its ear, may spook at this next one.

The fact that the horse has a brain will NOT save you. Horses don’t know left-side from right-side. Horses don’t know what the yellow and white lines mean. Very well-trained horses, which are the only kind you should ever have on the road in the first place, respond to subtle muscular cues from the rider’s legs. Think you can’t weave all over the road on a horse? You can and you will if you’re drunk.

It just feels wrong somehow. As someone else says somewhere else in this thread, if I were riding on your back, and I were drunk, would I be fined for dangerous driving? I’d be driving you as much as I’d be driving a horse. What if the horse is drunk and I’m not? That’s more dangerous, but what are you gonna do, fine the horse? Maybe I shouldn’t walk my dog drunk under the same grounds? Is it OK if you’re walking the horse, and not on its back? It’s just such a minefield – which bikes/cars etc. aren’t, because it’s a lot more black and white.

Interesting topic though – would make for a good real-life debate over a beer (followed by some horse riding).

While riding a horse is not exactly the same as driving a car, there are MANY things that you need to pay attention to that are not an issue in/on a car. In some ways, it is closer to riding a motorcycle–but in others, naturally, it is very different. In some ways, it is vastly more dangerous to ride a horse than a car–and others it is safer. But that isn’t my issue…

Operating anything impaired is a BAD idea. Period. Full stop. Be it car, bike, horse, goat, or even just your shoes on pavement–it is a BAD idea. I don’t think the officers in this situation did anything more wrong than pulling over a guy who was stumbling on the sidewalk, or who was weaving a bicycle.

What is worse: A guy walking out into traffic, a bicycle riding out into traffic, a guy on a horse trotting out into traffic, or a car going through the intersection on a red light?

A guy walking hurts the guy, the people driving the car that strikes him.
A guy on a bike hurts the guy, destroys the bike and sends it flying further into traffic, the people driving the car that strikes him.
A guy on a horse hurts the guy, the horse which causes more damage to the car, the people in the car are at a greater risk of getting injured, and then the traffic around the accident.
A car is the guy in the car, the cars involved, and the other drivers, and then more likely other pedestrians and/or other drivers as the cars come to a final rest.

Driving/operating things while impaired is a BAD idea. Adding other modes of transportation — be they mechanical or organic–only makes the situation worse.