You Can Be Charged For Drunk Driving Even If You Dont Turn The Key

Some cases of people being charged with drunk driving without actually driving:

Hartford, CT. Mar 24 – Drunken people don’t actually have to drive their cars to be charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court’s 5-0 ruling came in the case of Michael Cyr, who was arrested in Manchester in February 2005 in a parking lot near a bar. He had started his car remotely and then sat in the driver’s seat intoxicated, but never put the key into the ignition and didn’t drive anywhere.

Justices ordered the state Appellate Court, which had thrown out Cyr’s conviction, to reinstate it and send the case back to Superior Court in Manchester for sentencing.

Cyr, 50, of Andover, faces a year in prison followed by three years of probation.
Minneapolis, MN. Mar. 24 – Daryl Fleck was drunk and asleep in his car in the parking lot of his Crookston apartment building when someone called police.
Officers who responded that night in 2007 saw his car keys on the console between the front seats, but found no evidence that Fleck, who was parked in his assigned spot, had recently driven.

Nonetheless, Fleck was convicted of drunken driving, and on Tuesday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld that conviction in a decision that serves as a reminder that a person can be guilty of drunken driving without having driven.
The appeals court said that Fleck’s keys were "readily available to him," and there was no evidence he was in the car to do something other than drive.