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, June 2025 edition. The correct answer is It may be suspended or delayed for one year once you are eligible to drive.
The rule behind this one
California alcohol and drug rules for drivers goes through the whole topic, with the page of the California Driver's Handbook behind every rule.
More on alcohol and drugs
- Your doctor has prescribed a medicine that makes you drowsy. How does California's DUI law treat it?
- What does the handbook say about how age affects a driver's tolerance to alcohol?
- After a DUI stop you agreed to a preliminary alcohol screening (PAS) and a breath test. Can you still be required to take a blood or urine test?
- In which of these vehicles does the open container rule for alcohol NOT apply to a passenger?