Virginia's Driver Responsibility Law: What It Is and Is Not

No section of the Code of Virginia is headed “driver responsibility law”, and the two things people mean by the phrase could hardly be further apart. One is the abusive driver fees — Va. Code § 46.2-206.1, repealed with effect from March 27, 2008, and owed by nobody today. The other is Virginia’s financial responsibility requirement, which is very much alive and costs $600 to get wrong.

Why the phrase is ambiguous

Several states run a “driver responsibility program”: a surcharge assessed by the motor vehicle agency on top of the court fine, usually triggered by points or a serious conviction. Drivers who have moved from one of those states, or who read about one online, look for Virginia’s equivalent.

Virginia briefly had a version of that and repealed it. What remains, and what the Code does call responsibility, is a different idea entirely: the duty to be financially responsible for the damage your vehicle might do — in practice, to carry insurance.

There is one place the Code uses the words. Title 46.2, Chapter 3, Article 10 is headed “Driver Responsibilities, Generally” and runs from Va. Code § 46.2-364 to Va. Code § 46.2-370. Anyone searching the phrase will find it, so it is worth saying what it is: seven sections of definitions and administrative machinery — who the chapter applies to, what a certificate of self-insurance exempts an owner from, how the Commissioner administers and enforces it, and when a revoked licence, card or plate has to be handed back. Not one of its seven section headings names a fee, a surcharge or a penalty, which is the answer most people arriving on the phrase are actually looking for.

The abusive driver fees: repealed with effect from March 2008

The civil remedial fees usually remembered as Virginia’s “abusive driver fees” sat in Va. Code § 46.2-206.1. That section no longer exists. Its entry in the Code of Virginia now carries nothing but the word “Repealed”, above the line “Repealed by Acts 2008, cc. 656 and 657, cl. 1, effective March 27, 2008.”

A repealed section’s text is not republished, so the fee schedule itself is not available on LIS and is not reproduced here. What can be stated with confidence is what replaced it, which is nothing:

• No such fee is assessed today. A Virginia traffic conviction produces a fine set by the court, the fixed court costs in Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:1 — $51 for a traffic infraction, $61 for a misdemeanor — and DMV demerit points. There is no separate civil remedial fee and no DMV surcharge on top.
• A demand for one is not a current Virginia charge. Any bill describing itself as an abusive driver fee should be checked against the DMV’s own account of what is owed before a penny is paid.
• Old guidance is still online. Pages written while the section was in force were never taken down, which is a large part of why the phrase is still searched.

What the Virginia drivers’ responsibility law actually requires today

This is the live law, and it is in two sections.

Registering a vehicle. Va. Code § 46.2-706 requires every person applying to register a motor vehicle to certify that it is an insured motor vehicle as the Code defines it, or that the DMV has issued a certificate of self-insurance for it. The DMV verifies that against data transmitted by insurers, and where no record of liability insurance is found it may require the owner to verify insurance in a method the Commissioner prescribes.

Note what the current text does not contain. The old route of paying an uninsured motor vehicle fee and registering a vehicle without coverage is not in the statute; guidance built on it is out of date.

Not answering, or losing cover. Under § 46.2-706 B, if an owner refuses or neglects for 30 days to supply the insurance information the DMV asks for, or the insurer notifies the DMV electronically that the policy is not in effect, the Commissioner shall suspend the owner’s driver’s licence and all registration certificates and licence plates. They stay suspended until the owner pays a noncompliance fee of $600 and files proof of financial responsibility for the future. No such suspension takes effect until the DMV has offered an administrative hearing, which must be requested within 180 days — longer for military service, incarceration, hospitalisation or absence from the United States. After three years the Commissioner may relieve the owner of the proof requirement.

What “proof of financial responsibility” means in practice

The phrase is doing real work in § 46.2-706 B. Paying the $600 is not the end of it: the owner must also file proof that the vehicle will be covered going forward, in the manner the financial responsibility article of Title 46.2 prescribes, and keep it filed. That filing is made by the insurer, so a policy has to be bought before the licence comes back, and a lapse in it puts the driver straight back where they started. The Commissioner may relieve the requirement once three years have passed.

The administrative hearing is the other part people miss. No suspension under this subsection takes effect until the DMV has offered one, and the request has to be made within 180 days of the notice — with longer allowed for a person in military service, in custody, in hospital or outside the United States. A driver who reads the notice and does nothing loses the chance to argue that the DMV’s insurance data was simply wrong.

Driving uninsured: Va. Code § 46.2-707

Owning an uninsured Virginia-registered vehicle and operating it, or letting someone else operate it, is a Class 3 misdemeanor under Va. Code § 46.2-707 — a fine of up to $500 and no jail, under Va. Code § 18.2-11. So is driving one as a non-owner who knows it is uninsured, and so is giving the DMV false evidence of insurance.

	What the section does
Criminal penalty	Class 3 misdemeanor: fine of up to $500, no jail
Plates	The owner must surrender the vehicle’s licence plates to the DMV immediately
DMV consequence	Licence, registrations and plates suspended; nothing reissued until a $600 noncompliance fee is paid and proof of financial responsibility is filed
Non-owner driver	Licence suspended for 30 days
False insurance evidence	Reissue blocked for 180 days
Refusing to verify	Prima facie evidence that the vehicle was uninsured at the time

There is a statutory escape hatch: the penalties do not apply where the owner “had good cause to believe and did believe” the vehicle was insured, in which case a different section of the insurance article governs instead.

The $600 figure is worth repeating because so many pages still quote $500. The current text says $600.

The mechanism Virginia actually uses for bad driving records

Not fees — points. Va. Code § 46.2-492 directs the DMV Commissioner to assign point values to reportable traffic convictions, including convictions under parallel local ordinances and convictions from other states and Canada, under the Uniform Demerit Point System. Registration, insurance and equipment offences are excluded from the point system except where the title says otherwise.

The point values themselves are set by DMV regulation and published by the DMV rather than written into the Code. Points are what drive advisory letters, required driver improvement clinics and, eventually, suspension — and they arrive without any separate fee.

How to find out what you actually owe

Because the phrase is ambiguous, so is the bill. Three sources settle it, and none of them is a search engine:

1. The court’s own record, for a fine and costs from a specific case. Virginia’s general district courts publish case information through the judiciary’s online case information system, and the clerk’s office in the county or city named on the summons can confirm a balance.
2. The DMV, for anything administrative — a suspension, a noncompliance fee, a proof-of-insurance requirement or a point total. These never come from a court, and a court cannot lift them.
3. The current text of the section the bill relies on, at law.lis.virginia.gov. If the section reads “Repealed”, as § 46.2-206.1 and § 46.2-395 both do, the obligation described by any page that cites it no longer exists.

A demand that fits none of the three is worth treating with suspicion. Payment scams built on traffic-ticket wording are common, and the tell is usually a link to somewhere that is not the court or the DMV.

What a Virginia driving licence can still be suspended for

Quite a lot, but not what most websites say. Va. Code § 46.2-395, which required the DMV to suspend a licence for failure to pay court fines and costs, is repealed. Its LIS entry now reads only “Repealed.” Unpaid court debt is pursued as a debt instead — see Virginia court fines and what happens when they go unpaid.

Failing to appear is a different matter. Under Va. Code § 46.2-938, not complying with a traffic summons in a misdemeanor case is itself a Class 1 misdemeanor, the court may issue a warrant, and if the warrant comes back “not found” or the person does not appear on the return date, the DMV Commissioner shall suspend the licence until the court reports that the defendant has appeared.

And, as above, an insurance lapse suspends a licence under § 46.2-706 B whether or not anyone was ever convicted of anything.

In short

“The Virginia drivers’ responsibility law” is not a current statute by that name. If the question is about a surcharge on convictions, the answer is that Virginia repealed its version in 2008. If the question is about proving you can pay for the damage your car does, the answer is Va. Code §§ 46.2-706 and 46.2-707, a $600 noncompliance fee, and a suspension that does not wait for a court date.

Where a letter is genuinely unclear about what it is demanding and on what authority, a Virginia traffic attorney can read it against the current Code far faster than a search engine will. For how the rest of the system fits together, see Virginia’s traffic laws, what a traffic ticket costs and, if the letter is about a summons rather than the DMV, what to do with a Virginia traffic ticket.