Have You Accidentally Committed This Crime in NJ While Drunk?
Have you ever gotten a little drunker than you anticipated and didn’t want to leave your car at the bar? Sleeping in your car may not be the answer.
You know we’ve all been in the same situation where we “promised” we were going to just have 2 drinks and you end up at Mcdonald's at 3 am not knowing how you got there.
The easy solution would be to just sleep in your car and save some money on an uber, but in New Jersey, you can actually get into some serious trouble for it. Although you’re not physically driving, you can still be arrested and convicted of drunk driving for being drunk while sleeping in your car.
According to criminallayerinnj.com, there was a case in NJ called the State Of New Jersey v. John Thompson that proved an intoxicated person can still be convicted of a DWI if sitting behind the wheel while the engine is started, even if the car is in park and you have no intentions of moving.
So no matter what the case is if you started driving and realized you may be too intoxicated to keep going or if you have no intentions of driving and want to just sleep off your buzz, you can still get arrested and pay thousands of dollars in fines in the state of New Jersey.
This had me thinking after, what if you got in the backseat and kept the keys out of the ignition? Turns out that you can still get yourself into some serious heat for that too, according to brickdonlaw.com.
Basically, always remember that if there is evidence that you had the intention of driving, you can still get charged with a DWI. So the moral of the story is that if you had too much to drink, ditch your car and go back for it the next day.
An Uber is always much cheaper than a DWI/DUI and safer than attempting to get yourself home.