If you own a vehicle and drive it on any of the highways and roads that cross this country, you are required to carry insurance on that vehicle to protect yourself and others.
The amount of coverage and the types of policies vary from state to state. Where one state might only require that you carry Personal Injury Protection and Liability to obtain a registration, another may require you to carry Comprehensive and Collision coverages with specific minimum limits. It is your responsibility as a registered car owner to know what your financial requirements are.
Things can go wrong. You can forget to pay your premium and be cancelled by your insurer. You can get a few too many tickets, and find your coverage dropped. You can get yourself arrested for driving under the influence and lose your license and your coverage.
Getting back on track after an incident such as a DUI charge is no easy task and it takes a good DUI lawyer to straighten out a lot of the legal paperwork.
Many states require you to add another piece of paper to your list of things you carry in your billfold or purse. You will need to obtain an SR-22 from your insurance company and you will need to keep it for as long as the state says to.
This is additional information that your insurance company will file for you with your state of residence to let the state know that you are carrying liability insurance. It is a Certificate of Financial Responsibility.
The SR-22 certificate is in addition to your regular policy that lets the state know that your insurance company is keeping an eye on you and that if for any reason you lapse in payment of your policy, or drop coverage, the state will immediately be notified.
This can cause you to lose your driver’s license by suspension or revocation, and you will need to purchase another SR-22.
You do not need to renew the SR-22, as long as you have an active policy, the SR-22 will stay in effect. There is a separate filing fee for this that is payable to the state. Your insurer can help you with that. If you and a spouse need to file an SR-22, you will be responsible for two filing fees.
Even things that have happened in the past can come back and show up on your driving record.
The state of California made changes in the driving under the influence law in 2007 that changed the length of time a driving under the influence charge appears on your driving record. Whereas the old law dropped a DUI charge off the record after a seven year period, the new law now allows it to stay for ten years.
Because of this change, many people were caught unaware and driving records that were perfectly fine one day were no longer fine the next. In some cases employers who had checked driving records were surprised to find a DUI on an employee’s record the next time they received a print out from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Insurance companies that may have issued safe driving discounts to a person one year, raised rates, or dropped coverage when they saw an old DUI. In cases like this, hiring a DUI lawyer would be in your best interest.
It isn’t just a DUI that can show up under the new California law; a “wet reckless” can be held against you for ten years as well.
In California, if you are pulled over for suspected alcohol or drug abuse you may have the option to plea for a lesser offense or hire a DUI lawyer and take your chances in criminal court. An experienced DUI lawyer may be able to get you offered the option to plead guilty to the offense of alcohol related reckless driving, which is considered the same as driving under the influence by most insurers, but called “wet-reckless”.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you are faced with a charge of driving under the influence, you are well advised to obtain expert counsel by a DUI lawyer that specializes in all the options available to you.
