Great thread!
Folks, welcome to the wonderful world of statutory interpretation. This is precisely the process that legislators go through when creating or revising a law, and precisely the process that attorneys and judges go through when attempting to describe and interpret that law. Many "interpretations" of a statute might be considered "reasonable" and, as such, different rules (such as the rule of lenity) may be implicated to dictate how the interpretation is to be made.
The "correct" answer to the question about how the statute is really to be interpreted is, "It depends." It depends on how persuasive the attorney arguing one interpretation is compared to the attorney arguing a different interpretation. It depends on how one judge interprets the statute compared to how another judge interprets the statute. Then, when courts are in disagreement, one with the other, it depends on how the majority of the appellate court judges considering the question interpret the statute. If one appellate court in a given state ("state" for the purposes of this example) interprets the statute differently than another appellate court in that state, it then depends on how the majority of the supreme court justices for that state interpret the statute. It might, considering the implications of enforcement of the statute, even be taken into the federal court system where even more judges get to weigh in on the question. Possibly, the question could go as high as to require the U.S. Supreme Court (more accurately, a majority or plurality of the justices) to weigh in on it. And, sometimes, even they get it wrong.
However, frequently, as in the case of RCW 9.41.050(1)(b), the "accurate" meaning of a statute is subject to the "it depends" analysis.
:cuss: