Spokane News uses the word vehicle in sometimes odd ways. A car hitting a bicycle is vehicle vs bicycle, but a bicycle hitting a person is vehicle vs pedestrian. Sometimes the word means only a motorized vehicle and sometimes all things on wheels.
Got me thinking. Is a ship a vehicle? I don’t think so. My intuitive first thought is simply things with wheels. BUT: Office chairs and pianos have wheels, but they’re not vehicles.
Google gives this legal definition, which seems to include and exclude the right categories:
“Vehicle” means a device capable of being moved upon a public highway and in, upon, or by which any persons or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway.
So the motor doesn’t matter and the wheels don’t matter. Horse-drawn carriages and horse-drawn sleighs and bikes are definitely vehicles, but ships and planes aren’t. The public highway part excludes things on casters, or sidewalk pushcarts. At first it seems to exclude farm equipment, but is or may be probably includes tractors and riding mowers and wheelchairs, which are normally used on private land but often travel on roads.
Public highway excludes railroad cars but includes streetcars, which happen to be on tracks inside a street. Then what about this?
Used to be more common, now only in a few places. Manhattan used to have a street with houses and sidewalks on both sides but only a train track in the middle, no pavement for cars. Trains were the only vehicle on the public street. Did those trains become vehicles as they entered El Paso Street, then stop being vehicles as they left?
Polistra's Mill 