Alcohol and drugs
You are 16 and are convicted of riding a bicycle while under the influence of alcohol. What can happen to your driving privilege?
- It may be suspended or delayed for one year once you are eligible to drive. Correct answer
- Nothing: a bicycle is not a motor vehicle, so it cannot touch your driving privilege.
- It may be suspended for 30 days once you are eligible to drive.
Why
A bicycle can cost you a driver's license you do not even hold yet. For anyone between 13 and 20 years old, a bicycle conviction for riding under the influence, alcohol or drugs alike, can mean the driving privilege is suspended or delayed for one year, counted from the point you become eligible to drive. So the idea that a bicycle is outside the system is exactly the assumption the handbook closes off. Thirty days is a real period on these pages, but it belongs elsewhere: it is the life of the temporary license after a DUI arrest and the maximum impound for an under-21 driver caught with alcohol in the vehicle. One year is the number that keeps coming back in this section, for a refused chemical test and for a DUI conviction as well as for this.
Where this comes from
California Driver's Handbook, DL 600 ENGLISH (REV. 6/2025). The correct answer is It may be suspended or delayed for one year once you are eligible to drive..
- Section 9. Alcohol and Drugs , page 72
- Section 9. Alcohol and Drugs › DUI Arrests , page 74
- Section 9. Alcohol and Drugs › Drivers Under 21 , page 75
- Section 9. Alcohol and Drugs , page 72
- Section 9. Alcohol and Drugs › DUI Convictions , page 74