Virginia Traffic Court and DMV fees

About a month ago I mentioned Virginia's new speeding ticket fees. I saw a more complete breakdown of them and wanted to just give a quick update on that. These are fees imposed by the Virginia DMV, on top of the fines that come from the traffic courts in Virginia.

It starts at $750 for driving with a suspended or revoked license (commonly called AUO in New York). A variety of offenses lead to a $900 fee, though they're all odd things like driving with crappy tires or driving a school bus without the proper license. These are real things but we rarely see them.

The famous one is the $1050 fee (though it may be as low as $900) for reckless driving. In NY reckless driving is its own offense, but there are states, such as Virginia, where certain things are automatically reckless driving. This includes speed more than 20 over the limit, speed over 80 mph, and a few other things.

DWI offenses lead to fees of $2250 or $3000 depending on the circumstances, and there is a "felony reckless driving" that also has a $3000 DMV fee.

All I can say is that you should drive slow in Virginia, and otherwise be careful, and if all that fails, hire a lawyer.

Reckless Driving

We've been seeing more reckless driving cases lately. Maybe summer does that. So I added a page on that topic to the firm website. Often the reckless driving charge comes from a high speed alone, which should not be enough for that offense (VTL 1212).

We have been getting a fair number of cases with AUO - Aggravated Unlicensed Operation, so I added a page on that too.