Virginia DUI laws

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What is Virginia DUI?

DUI in Virginia is referred to driving under the influence. Like any other state in our country, Virginia also measured DUI by your Blood Alcohol Concentration, and the percentage of blood alcohol concentration depends on your age and your license type. Here’s how the law works. In Virginia, there are two ways a driver can violate the DUI laws.

  • DUI Per Se: You are driving, and your blood alcohol concentration (blood, breath, or urine) result is 0.08% or higher.
  • DUI: You are driving, and an officer decides you are under the influence of alcohol or any other drugs.

If an officer stops you over and your blood alcohol concentration is the following percentage or higher, he will arrest you for DUI:

  • 21 years old or older: 0.08%.
  • Younger than 21 years old: 0.02%.
  • Commercial Drivers (CDL): 0.04%.

Apart from the DUI charges, if you are underage and you are caught having alcohol, then you will have the penalties as per the law. If you are ever charged with the DUI charges, then you will have misdemeanor class 1 charges which are enough to register anyone as a criminal. Although you can appeal for the case and hire a lawyer to revert these charges. Typically, a police officer will stop you and put you through a series of field sobriety tests (FSTs) to check if you’re impaired or not. Under the first situation, the prosecutor will need to show that you have driven your car when your capacity to drive was seriously diminished by alcohol, drugs or a combination of the two. You don’t have to have a Blood Alcohol Concentration of 0.08 or more to violate this law.

Under the second situation, the officer only needs to prove your blood alcohol concentration was at .08 or more to convict you.

There are different laws for under-18, under-21 and more than 21 years old and the penalties are depending on the age and the percentage of blood alcohol concentration of a person.

DUI Penalties

Penalties for DUI are misdemeanor class 1 charge. When a person is convicted of DUI charges, then he will be given a minimum fine of $250 and a maximum fine of $2,500. Mandatory jail for three days and if the case gets worse, it can exceed up to a year in jail. It depends on how severe the offense was. Any defendant will have their license suspended for a month, at least and there are chances that the defendant might be taken away with the driving privileges. If you are convicted with the second offense within five years or 10 years, then the charges might get even more serious, and it will keep on exceeding if there are continuous offenses. Continuous offenses will result in felony charges which have a 1-year mandatory jail and a fine of $2,500.

Virginia DUI laws – call us at 888-437-7747.