Can a search under the Vehicle Code be justified as incident to a lawful arrest?

Thus, the search in the instant case, if sought to be justified as incident to a lawful arrest, could be upheld regardless of the impound provisions of the Vehicle Code. It was not therefore an 'otherwise unreasonable search' as was the situation in Virgil. Preston v. United States (1964), 376 U.S. 364, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777, is also distinguishable. In that case there was no search at the scene of the arrest and the initial search occurred at the police impound after the defendants had been booked on a charge of vagrancy, a charge wholly unrelated to that to which the subsequently seized evidence related. It was held that the search was too remote in time and place to have been incidental to the arrest and thus the search without warrant failed to meet the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. (376 U.S. at p. 368, 84 S.Ct. 881.)