What impact does a DWI charge have on your license?

If you are charged with a DWI that registers a 0.8 or above blood alcohol concentration on the intoxilyzer at the station by breath or if you refuse to perform the breathalyzer, your license is going to be immediately revoked for a 30-day period. This is a 30-day civil revocation  from the date of offense. If there was no refusal and a blood test was performed, then there will not be an immediate 30-day license revocation. According to Alcohol.org, a revocation could come down the road once the results of the blood come back.

In order to get the revocation lifted, there has to be $100 fee that is paid to the clerk’s office in the county of the charge. That $100 fine would have to get paid immediately to the clerk’s office, and then the 30-day civil revocation will be lifted upon the passing of 30 days.

As a result of the revocation, there is a potential to have, during the final 20 days of that initial 30-day revocation period, what is called a pretrial limited driving privilege. So again, that revocation occurs before there has been a conviction of the DWI. There is a 20-day period where you could get a limited driving privilege that is court-ordered. It is a piece of paper that allows you to drive for very particular circumstances. These could be for work, school or household purposes.

All of those would be included as potential reasons for driving under the limited privilege, and it is territorially restricted, certainly within the confines of North Carolina. It could be even more restrictive territorially than that, depending on the judge’s decision that is signing the limited driving privilege. Most of those limited driving privileges that are signed pretrial have to go in front of a judge after requesting a hearing in the clerk’s office. You have to go into the clerk’s office and request a limited driving privilege hearing.