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this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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That is both hilarious and stupid. You would have to imagine the definition of a boat would be something that floats, which the Cybertruck clearly isn't in this photo. It's also less water than the truck is rated in the owner's manual to be able to handle.
This got me thinking, you're right, how can it be a boat if it can't float?
Turns out, everything is bigger in Texas, including the legal definition of what constitutes a boat.
Is it motorized, above 14 feet in length, and afloat, docked, or stored on Texas waters? Then it's a boat that needs to be registered, fam.
I've read that, and I don't think any reasonable person would consider a vehicle being driven on a lake bed to be a vessel.
No, but its owner was storing it in a lake, it’s over 14’ long, and has a (non-functional) motor.
Have an accident where you drive off a bridge in Texas, get charged with not having a boat registration.
I wonder if they charged the guy who crashed his Veyron in Galveston Bay? I mean with something other than insurance fraud.
I was trying to figure out why that name sounded familiar. I hadn't heard of the story you referenced. I'm also pretty sure I've never been near anywhere with that name, though I think I might have encountered a road with a similar one.
Eventually, I remembered a book my then 5yo gave me after it was withdrawn from the school library and offered as a "keep forever" book.
The book did tell an interesting story partially based on real life first person accounts of a famous storm / flood, but overall it was fictional. There were some details I thought were inappropriate. I don't know if those details (casual racism and acceptance of same, both by otherwise redeemable characters and by the victims of it; fairly graphic representation of bodily harm) match the reality of the time but, to put it bluntly, I agree with whomever made the decision to withdraw the book from a children's library.
(I'm not sure what age group has access to the library. I do think it's important for schools to allow access to uncomfortable facts, especially of history ... But again, my kid was five at the time, so presumably other similarly aged kids also had access and I don't think that they needed to hear these stories at that age.
My kid didn't read, nor appear to want to read, the book, but given that they get freaked out by my surgery scars I don't think that they would have benefited from doing so.)
1900 Texas, yeah, it matches the reality of the time. We're talking about a state that 40 years before that had voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union and ousted their governor when he refused to join the Confederacy. We're talking full on Jim Crow, segregation as law, redlining, employment gating, etc etc - it was very bad.
But yeah I mean I probably wouldn't say a 5yo should be engaging with that content, but I could see a 10 year old maybe? It feels 6th grade level is about right for that?
I think we're on the same metaphorical page.
This would mean every vehicle used to launch a boat would be considered a boat in it's own right. As well as the trailer.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to store my truck or trailer in the lake?
Neither did this guy, at least not intentionally.
It seems like a vehicle being driven in a body of water is considered a vessel, and that's just absurd.
But he did intentionally drive it out there with the intent to use it as a boat.
No, he intended to use it as a vehicle. Off road vehicles drive through water all the time.
It's really not absurd. If you're going to attempt to use your truck as a boat, you're going to hit by both sides of consequences.
No it says stored. And thus was "stored" not by choice but it was.
Well, kinda by choice.
Maybe, but a reasonable person also wouldn't drive a car into a lake.
A submersible is a vessel.
It's also not submerged, not entirely.
Submarines dont have to be underwater to still be submersibles.
Sailors are big fans of the boat floating when they want to get on and off the thing. The alternatives are...not so great.
Even submersibles float, just underwater.
The whole thing is absurd.
Submersibles always float, even when above the water line. They retain their state as submarines regardless of where and whence they float.
Even in dry dock, where they "float" in the air due to steel beams, they are still submarines.
It's not really on Texas waters, is it though?
Well, I think it's not wrong to apply the same rules to any kind of vessel you take into the water. Therefore, it's good to simply assume that every vessel in the water is some kind of boat so people don't say 'well akshually this is not a boat' and do bullshit like this cybertruck driver.
You act as though there aren't already definitions for these things. You don't treat a child's pool float the same as an ocean liner.
A vessel, in a marine context, is typically something that floats.
Change it to "no valid submarine registration"
Well, THAT'S comedy gold for me! laughs out loud
And, well, some laws are kinda stupid. After hearing a few of other examples it doesn't surprise me that you could end up in jail because of this kind of a law.
They are just keeping the driver there until they determine if he got hit in the head stupid or born stupid.