Man In Australia Arrested for Motorized Cooler DUI

NOOSA, Australia -- An Australian man caught driving a motorized cooler box through a beachside resort town appeared in court charged with drunk driving, The Courier Mail reported Monday. Christopher Ian Petrie, 23, faces charges of driving under the influence and driving without a license after police caught him on the makeshift vehicle, which was powered by a 50cc engine. The incident took place on June 16 in Noosa on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane. Petrie's lawyers won an adjournment from magistrate John Parker as they sought to establish "whether a motorized esky [cooler box] was in fact a motor vehicle." An amused Parker inquired with Petrie about his cooler box's performance. "How much beer can it hold?" he asked the defendant. Petrie told the court the cooler box could hold "at least a couple of cartons."

Of course this happened in Australia...just one more reason why I'm moving there when I retire at 45...

And it's a good thing it happened there, because I can tell you with 100% certainty if this happened in the states the magistrate wouldn't have adjourned the case to debate whether a cooler with wheels is a motor vehicle...We would have just slapped this kid with a DUI and ruined the next 5-10 years or his life.  Nothing our justice system likes more than making an example out of fun loving mischiefs. 

I feel like we should have a set ground rule for this,  the real litmus test should be,  if this guy ran over a pedestrian on his motorized beer cooler, would it kill an innocent bystander?  Nope, everyone would be fine, only person that's dying is this guy if he drives into actual traffic, if he keeps this on the sidewalks he's no more dangerous than the average motorized wheel chair (that's not a shot at people in wheel chairs, its just that I've seen my fair share of motorized wheel chair owners who act like they own the sidewalk, breaking toes, scaring children, being completely oblivious of everyone around them, they're like the Hummer owners of the pedestrian world).  

PS: by my own set rules, a motorized keg would indeed be classified as a motor vehicle. I'm pretty sure if you got one of those going down hill you could take out a small child, midget, or fragile senior citizen.