What Actually Sets the Price of SR-22 Insurance

What the statute obliges you to buy, state by state

Here is the part that is genuinely published, and that a premium average cannot substitute for: the amount of liability coverage the law requires. It is the floor your SR-22 has to satisfy, it is written in each state's own code, and it moves. California's floor rose in 2025 and rises again in 2035; Virginia's rose in 2025. Every figure below was read on 2 September 2026 in the source named in the last column.

State	What the law requires, and when	Bodily injury, one person	Bodily injury, two or more	Property damage	Source
California	Policies issued or renewed on or after 1 Jan 2025	$30,000	$60,000	$15,000	Cal. Veh. Code § 16056
California	Same section, from 1 Jan 2035	+$20,000	+$40,000	+$10,000	Cal. Veh. Code § 16056
Virginia	Policies effective 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2024	$30,000	$60,000	$20,000	Va. Code § 46.2-472(A)
Virginia	Policies effective on or after 1 Jan 2025	$50,000	$100,000	$25,000	Va. Code § 46.2-472(B)
New York	Injury figure / death figure, stated separately	$25,000 / $50,000	$50,000 / $100,000	$10,000	NY DMV insurance requirements
Indiana	State minimum standard, "commonly referred to as 25/50/25"	$25,000	$50,000	$25,000	Indiana BMV Driver's Manual, ch. 5
Florida	Proof of financial responsibility, ordinary case	$10,000	$20,000	$10,000	Fla. Stat. § 324.021(7)
Florida	After a DUI conviction after 1 Oct 2007, for 3 years	$100,000	$300,000	$50,000	Fla. Stat. § 324.023

Sources, each read 2 September 2026: Cal. Veh. Code § 16056; Va. Code § 46.2-472; New York DMV, insurance requirements; Indiana BMV Driver's Manual, Chapter 5; Fla. Stat. § 324.021; Fla. Stat. § 324.023.

Three observations that are ours, not the states', and that you can check against the table.

In Florida, part of what a DUI costs is written into the statute rather than into the underwriting. Section 324.023 raises the required per-person bodily injury figure from $10,000 to $100,000 — a tenfold increase — and the property damage figure from $10,000 to $50,000, and it says how long you carry them: "Such higher limits must be carried for a minimum period of 3 years." Everywhere else in this table the amount of coverage the law demands is the same whether your record is clean or not. So when a Florida driver's bill jumps after an SR-22 after a DUI, some share of that is not the insurer rating you worse — it is you buying a materially larger product. That distinction is invisible in every published "average cost" figure, because those figures never say which limits they priced.

Florida offers the same drivers a cash alternative, and puts a number on it. Section 324.023 allows the elevated obligation to be met with a deposit instead of a policy: "such certificate of deposit must be at least $350,000." It is not a premium and not a fee — it is the amount of your own money Florida will accept in place of an insurer's promise, and it is the closest thing in this area to a state pricing the risk itself.

New York's shorthand hides a second tier. New York is universally described as a 25/50/10 state. Its DMV page actually sets out two figures per band: "$25,000 for bodily injury and $50,000 for death for a person involved in a crash" and "$50,000 for bodily injury and $100,000 for death for two or more people in a crash." A New York driver comparing quotes against a "25/50/10" benchmark is using a description of the requirement that the agency itself does not use.

The bill the state sends you separately

Now the part missing from essentially every SR-22 cost page, and entirely published: two states bill the driver directly, every year, for three years, for the same event that triggered the filing. This is not premium and not a reinstatement fee. It is a separate assessment with its own bill, its own due date and its own suspension for non-payment.

New Jersey says outright what these charges are not. Its Motor Vehicle Commission brochure ISS-50 (R10/17), the printed surcharge facts sheet read 2 September 2026, opens with this:

"New Jersey law* requires collection of surcharges from motorist whose driving records include certain motor vehicle offenses. These surcharges are in addition to any court-imposed fines and penalties or any premiums that may be assessed by insurance companies."

The footnote points to N.J.S.A. 17:29A-35, and the brochure places the regulations at N.J.A.C. 13:19-13.1 et seq. The state is drawing exactly the line this site draws: the surcharge is not a premium, nobody's quote contains it, and it arrives anyway.

State	Charge, as the agency names it	Trigger	Billed per year	Years	Total
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge	No liability insurance on motor vehicle	$250	3	$750
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge	Driving while suspended, court or MVC reported	$250	3	$750
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge	Unlicensed driver	$100	3	$300
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge	DUI or refusal, first and second, in state or out	$1,000	3	$3,000
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge	Third DUI within three years of the first	$1,500	3	$4,500
New Jersey	Point surcharge	Six or more points in three years or less	$150, plus $25 for each additional point	—	—
New York	Driver Responsibility Assessment	Alcohol- or drug-related conviction, or test refusal	$250	3	$750
New York	Driver Responsibility Assessment	Six or more points within 18 months	$100, plus $25 for each point above six	3	$300

Sources, each read 2 September 2026: New Jersey MVC, Surcharges and MVC brochure ISS-50 (R10/17) linked above; New York DMV, Driver Responsibility Assessment.

Two things fall out of that table that neither agency states.

New Jersey bills a driver as much for having no insurance as New York bills one for a DUI. Both come to $750 over three years — New Jersey's for the uninsured-vehicle surcharge, New York's for the alcohol-related assessment. The two states are pricing very different behaviour at exactly the same number, and New Jersey's own DUI surcharge is four times New York's. If your SR-22 arises from driving uninsured, New Jersey is the more expensive state to have done it in, before a single quote is taken.

New Jersey prices the missing insurance above the missing licence. Driving unlicensed draws $100 a year; no liability insurance on the vehicle draws $250 a year. The schedule treats the uninsured vehicle as the more serious of the two, which is the opposite of the intuition most drivers bring to it.

Both assessments have teeth of their own. New Jersey's brochure is explicit about non-payment: "If you fail to pay the surcharges in full, or to begin an installment payment plan (IPP) by that date, your driving privilege will be indefinitely suspended. You will also be charged an additional $100 fee that must be paid before you can have your driving privilege restored." New York's page is shorter and says the same thing: "You must pay at least the minimum amount by the payment date or your driver license, your learner permit, or your driving privileges will be suspended." A driver who keeps the SR-22 filing perfectly current and lets the assessment lapse ends up suspended anyway — and then needs a fresh filing.

Minnesota shows a third shape. Its statute splits reinstatement into a fee and a surcharge, and only the surcharge tracks the cause: $30 for an ordinary revocation, while for an impaired-driving revocation the driver "must pay a $250 fee plus a $430 surcharge for each instance of revocation before the driver's license is reinstated", read at the Office of the Revisor of Statutes on 2 September 2026. The words "for each instance" are the operative ones: it is not once per driver. The one-off reinstatement charges for ten states, each read from the agency that sets it, are collected on our page of reinstatement fees your state publishes rather than repeated here.

The surcharge programmes that no longer exist, and what took their place

Two of the biggest driver-surcharge programmes in the country are gone, and most of the cost advice still circulating was written while they were running. Knowing which of these bills is live in 2026 is worth more than any average, because a repealed surcharge is money nobody will ask you for and a live one arrives whether or not your filing is current.

Texas repealed its Driver Responsibility Program outright. The enrolled text of H.B. 2048 of the 86th Legislature, read 2 September 2026, announces the whole trade in its caption:

"relating to the repeal of the driver responsibility program and the amount and allocation of state traffic fine funds; eliminating program surcharges; authorizing and increasing criminal fines; increasing a fee."

Section 15 is one line — "Chapter 708, Transportation Code, is repealed." — and section 17 sets the date: "This Act takes effect September 1, 2019." It was retroactive in two directions that most repeals are not. Section 16(a) says the repeal "applies to any surcharge pending on the effective date of this Act, regardless of whether the surcharge was imposed before that date", and 16(b) requires that the Department of Public Safety "shall reinstate any driver's license that is suspended under Section 708.152, Transportation Code, as of the effective date of this Act if the only reason the driver's license was suspended is a failure to pay a surcharge." The House passed it 143–0 and the Senate 31–0.

What replaced it is a court fine, not an agency bill. Section 14 of the Act added Chapter 709 to the Transportation Code, and its § 709.001(b) sets a fine, "in addition to the fine prescribed for the specific offense", on a person finally convicted of an offence relating to operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated: "$3,000 for the first conviction within a 36-month period", "$4,500 for a second or subsequent conviction within a 36-month period", and "$6,000" where the analysis "showed an alcohol concentration level of 0.15 or more". The same Act raised the flat state traffic fine on any offence under the subtitle from $30 to $50; the enrolled text reads "shall pay $50 [ $30 ] as a state traffic fine", the bracketed figure being the one struck out.

Michigan's driver responsibility fee is also gone, and the section usually cited for it makes an unusual exhibit. MCL 257.732a, read in an Internet Archive capture of the legislature's own URL on 2 September 2026 because the host refuses connections from this server, is now headed "Fire protection fund; creation; disposition of funds; transmission of fees to state treasurer" and imposes no charge on a driver anywhere in its text. What it still contains is subsection (2), which directs that "The secretary of state shall transmit the fees collected under this section to the state treasurer" — an instruction for handling fees the section no longer levies. Its history line begins "Add. 2003, Act 165, Eff. Oct. 1, 2003" and records amendments by 2018 Acts 43, 45, 46 and 50. That the surviving shell is the old fee provision is our reading of those dates and of that orphaned subsection, not something the page states; the amending Acts were not opened, and the point is in the unverified list. What the section does say is where the residue goes: "The first $8,500,000.00 must be credited to the fire protection fund", and after that "the next $1,000,000.00 must be credited to the department of state for necessary expenses incurred by the department of state in implementing and administering the requirements of sections 625k and 625q." Sections 625k and 625q are the ignition interlock provisions — device certification and installer enforcement.

State	Programme	Status, read 2026-09-02	What stands in its place	Source
New Jersey	Insurance surcharge, N.J.S.A. 17:29A-35	Live; billed annually for three years	—	MVC brochure ISS-50 (R10/17)
New York	Driver Responsibility Assessment	Live; billed annually for three years	—	NY DMV, Driver Responsibility Assessment
Texas	Driver Responsibility Program, Transp. Code ch. 708	Repealed, effective 1 Sep 2019, including surcharges then pending	Transp. Code ch. 709 court fines of $3,000 / $4,500 / $6,000; state traffic fine raised to $50	H.B. 2048, 86th Leg.
Michigan	Driver responsibility fee; MCL 257.732a is the section usually cited	No driver charge anywhere in the section as it now reads	An allocation: first $8.5m to the fire protection fund, next $1m to administer the interlock sections 625k and 625q	MCL 257.732a, via Internet Archive
Virginia	Uninsured-vehicle noncompliance fee, Va. Code § 46.2-706(B)	Live; one-off, and it restarts a three-year proof obligation	—	Va. Code § 46.2-706

Sources, each read 2 September 2026: the New Jersey and New York pages linked in the section above; H.B. 2048; MCL 257.732a via Internet Archive; Va. Code § 46.2-706.

Two observations of ours, and neither legislature says either.

Texas did not abolish the money; it moved the money to a place where a judge can cancel it. The old surcharge was an administrative bill that arrived and kept arriving. The replacement is a criminal fine, and § 709.001(c) provides that if the court "makes a finding that the person is indigent, the court shall waive all fines and costs imposed on the person under this section." Not may — shall. The same event, for the same driver, went from a charge with no means test to one with a mandatory waiver.

Virginia's version is a one-off fee that buys you a three-year obligation. Section 46.2-706(B) suspends the licence and every registration until the owner "has paid to the Commissioner a noncompliance fee of $600" and "furnishes proof of financial responsibility in the future" — and only "When three years have elapsed from the effective date of the suspension" may the Commissioner lift the proof requirement. So the fee is not the end of it, which is the whole shape of an SR-22 after driving without insurance: you pay once and then carry the filing for three years.

The interlock bill, and where a state will lower it because you cannot pay

If the filing came from an alcohol offence, there is a second recurring bill that no insurance quote contains and that most cost pages skip: the ignition interlock. States do not set the lease price — the vendor does, exactly as with the filing fee — but several publish a fee of their own on top of it, and several publish the terms on which the whole thing gets cheaper for someone who cannot afford it. That second half is the part almost nobody writes down.

Start with the connection that makes this an SR-22 question at all. Washington's RCW 46.20.385(2), read 2 September 2026, makes the filing a precondition of the interlock licence: an applicant "is eligible to receive a license only if the applicant files satisfactory proof of financial responsibility under chapter 46.29 RCW." The two costs are not alternatives. Minnesota does something adjacent in Minn. Stat. § 171.306, subd. 3: a participant with a prior no-insurance conviction or suspension must present "an insurance identification card that is certified by the insurance company to be noncancelable for a period not to exceed 12 months" — a one-year, non-cancellable instrument, which is Minnesota's certificate in all but name.

State	What the state itself publishes	The amount or rule	If you cannot pay	Source (read 2026-09-02)
Washington	a monthly fee on top of the vendor's lease	"an additional fee of twenty-one dollars per month", of which the company "may retain 25 cents per month"	costs "waived by the ignition interlock company" or the person is "indigent under RCW 10.101.010"	RCW 46.20.385(6)
Washington	application fee for the interlock licence	"a fee of one hundred dollars"	—	RCW 46.20.380
Minnesota	no state fee; a duty imposed on the vendor	manufacturers must serve "indigent program participants at a discounted rate"	the same clause is the relief	Minn. Stat. § 171.306, subd. 2(b)(1)
Virginia	the alcohol safety action program fee	"no less than $250 but no more than $300"	"Upon a positive finding that the defendant is indigent, the court may reduce or waive the fee"	Va. Code § 18.2-271.1(B)
Virginia	reinstatement fee after a DUI-related revocation	"$105", split $40 to the DMV, $40 to the Commission on VASAP, $25 to the Commonwealth Neurotrauma Initiative Trust Fund	a restricted licence may issue without paying "his fines and costs" in full	Va. Code § 18.2-271.1(E)
Texas	the court fine that replaced the surcharge	$3,000 / $4,500 / $6,000	on a finding of indigence "the court shall waive all fines and costs imposed on the person under this section"	Tex. Transp. Code § 709.001(c)

Sources, each read 2 September 2026: RCW 46.20.385, RCW 46.20.380 and RCW 10.101.010; Minn. Stat. § 171.306; Va. Code § 18.2-271.1; H.B. 2048, § 14, adding Tex. Transp. Code § 709.001.

Three things fall out of that table that no single source states.

The relief comes in two completely different designs, and only one of them depends on a budget. Washington and Minnesota push the discount onto private parties: the interlock company may waive its own costs, and Minnesota's manufacturers must serve indigent participants at a discounted rate as a condition of certification. Virginia and Texas put it in a judge's hands instead. The difference matters because Washington's own subsidy route is explicitly conditional: the $21 monthly fee goes into an account created by RCW 46.68.340, where "Moneys in the account may be spent only after appropriation", and RCW 46.20.385(6)(b) has the department adopt rules "to provide monetary assistance according to greatest need and when funds are available." A vendor duty and a court order do not run out; an appropriation can.

Washington's means test was written for a different purpose, and one of its rules is about the car. RCW 46.20.385 sends you to RCW 10.101.010, the indigency definition from the chapter on appointing defence counsel. "Indigent" there covers a person who is "Receiving an annual income, after taxes, of one hundred twenty-five percent or less of the current federally established poverty level", or receiving one of a listed set of public benefits. And its definition of liquid assets carries this: "A motor vehicle necessary to maintain employment and having a market value not greater than three thousand dollars shall not be considered a liquid asset." So whether Washington helps you pay for the device on the car depends in part on what the car is worth. Texas draws the same 125 per cent line but proves it on paper, listing a tax return, a statement of wages, or documentation of assistance from the food stamp, WIC, medical assistance, child health plan or free-and-reduced-lunch programmes.

Two states let you drive before the bill is settled, which is the relief that actually matters. Virginia's § 18.2-271.1(E) provides that a person otherwise eligible for a restricted licence "shall not be required to pay in full his fines and costs, as defined in § 19.2-354.1, before being issued such restricted license." Iowa's § 321J.20(6) reaches the same result from the other end: the department may issue a temporary restricted licence to someone "whose period of revocation under this chapter has expired, but who has not met all requirements for reinstatement of the person's driver's license or nonresident operating privileges." In both, the sequence is reversed from the one everybody assumes — you can be driving legally, and insured under a filing, while still owing the state money.

Minnesota adds two contract terms in the same subdivision that are worth knowing before signing a lease. Under subd. 2(b)(2) the contract must say that a participant who withdraws "is only liable for servicing and monitoring costs incurred during the time the device is installed on the motor vehicle, regardless of whether the term of the contract has expired"; under subd. 2(b)(3) it must require the manufacturer "to pay any towing or repair costs caused by device failure or malfunction, or by damage caused during device installation, servicing, or monitoring." And subd. 9 forbids a judicial officer, county agency or probation office from requiring or suggesting a particular vendor, though it "may provide the person with a list of all Minnesota vendors of certified devices." Michigan reaches for the same worry differently: under MCL 257.625k the department supplies a list of approved manufacturers and "shall rotate the order of the providers with each list provided."

What the underlying premium actually runs on

The premium is not an SR-22 price. It is your ordinary auto insurance price, recalculated with a high-risk classification applied, which means every factor that would have priced your policy before is still in there:

• What triggered the filing. A DUI, a no-insurance violation, a suspension and an accumulation of points do not price the same. Insurers rate the underlying behaviour, not the paperwork.
• How recent it is, and how many there are. A single violation two years old prices differently from the same violation last month, and differently again from a second one on the same record.
• Your state. Base auto rates differ enormously between states before any violation is considered, and each carrier files its rates with each state's insurance department separately.
• The coverage you buy. The statutory table above is the floor, not the ceiling. Buying above it costs more, and for a driver with assets to protect it is often the right call anyway.
• Owner or non-owner. A non-owner SR-22 policy carries no vehicle on the risk, only you as a driver.
• The vehicle, if there is one. Make, model, age, where it is parked overnight and how far you drive it all still apply.
• Your coverage history. A gap in coverage is itself a rating factor at most carriers, separately from whatever the gap led to — and a gap is exactly what the SR-26 cancellation notice puts on the state's record.
• The carrier's appetite. Two insurers looking at the identical record will price it differently because they want different books of business.

That last factor is why shopping matters more here than with a standard policy. With a clean record, insurers converge; with a violation on file, they diverge, because they disagree about how much that violation predicts.

It also helps to know which side of the line each piece sits on, because you can only negotiate one side. Fixed, and not worth shopping for: the requirement itself, the statutory limits in the table above, the length of the filing period, the obligation to keep the coverage continuous, and the fact that your insurer must tell the state the moment it stops. Not fixed, and worth every minute you spend on it: the premium, the filing fee, whether a given carrier will write you at all, how quickly it files, the down payment against the instalment, and what happens at renewal.

Why the figures you find online aren't comparable

Search for the cost of an SR-22 and you will find numbers everywhere. They disagree with each other, and there is a reason for that beyond one of them being wrong.

• They rarely carry a date. A rate without the date it was collected cannot be checked against another one, because you cannot tell whether you are looking at a difference between insurers or a difference between years.
• They describe a profile, not a person. Researchers price a fictional driver — a stated age, a stated car, a stated ZIP code, one stated violation — and publish the result as an average.
• They mix terms. Monthly, six-month and annual figures circulate side by side, and a six-month premium presented without its term looks like a bargain against an annual one.
• They mix coverage levels. As the statutory table shows, "state minimum" is not one product: it is $10,000 of per-person bodily injury in ordinary Florida and $100,000 in post-DUI Florida, in the same state in the same year.
• They mix advertising with research. An agency's advertised starting price is a marketing entry point for the cheapest possible customer. A survey average is an estimate of a typical one.
• National averages average away the thing you need. State base rates and state statutory floors both vary so much that a national figure describes no state in particular.

None of this makes those figures dishonest. It makes them unusable for the one job you want them for.

Why a DUI-related filing costs more, and what that does to your budget

Insurers price risk, not paperwork, and a DUI signals more risk than a lapsed policy or an accumulation of points. Which of the two prices higher is not in doubt. How much higher is not something this page can tell you, and describing the gap as a ratio or a percentage would be a size figure in disguise; no dated source available here measures one. The ordering is what survives without arithmetic behind it — and in Florida part of the gap is not underwriting at all, but § 324.023 obliging you to buy ten times the per-person bodily injury cover for three years.

It matters practically for one reason. Most cost figures circulating online are DUI-anchored, because that is the case people search for. If your SR-22 came from an uninsured-driving citation or a points suspension, budgeting from those numbers will lead you to overestimate substantially, and possibly to accept the first quote you get because it looks like a bargain against a benchmark that was never yours. And how long you need the filing matters more to the total than the monthly figure does: three years of a cheaper policy can cost more than two years of a dearer one.

What to ask when you call for a quote

The point of a quote call is to come away with numbers you can line up against the next call. Ask for these, in this order:

1. Do you file SR-22 certificates in my state, and how quickly after the policy is bound?
2. What do you charge to file, as a separate line from the premium?
3. What is the premium at exactly my state's statutory limits — quote the figures from the table above — and what at the next step up?
4. If I might qualify for a non-owner policy, what would each one cost?
5. What is the down payment, and what is the recurring instalment?
6. What happens at renewal, and does the price move as the violation ages?
7. If I am switching from another insurer mid-period, how do you make sure there is no gap in the filing?

Disclose the actual violation on every call. A quote given without it is not a quote; it is a number that will be withdrawn at underwriting, usually after you have already stopped shopping. Then take quotes from at least three insurers who write SR-22 policies in your state, on the same day, at the same limits, with the same violation disclosed, and compare the total across the whole filing period rather than the monthly rate.

What I could not verify

Any premium figure at all, and deliberately so. No insurer publishes a rate for an individual driving record, and this site does not print averages built from other drivers. Every dollar amount above is a statutory limit or a charge the agency itself publishes.

Whether Virginia's FR-44 raises the required limits the way Florida's § 324.023 does. Virginia operates an FR-44 alongside its SR-22 and files both through the same DMV system, but the sections read for this page — § 46.2-472 among them — set the ordinary owner's-policy limits and carry no elevated post-conviction figure. A separate provision may. It was not located, so no Virginia FR-44 amount appears in the table.

Whether California, New York or Indiana raise required limits after a conviction. The sections and agency pages read here do not. That is the absence of a finding in the documents opened, not proof that no such provision exists elsewhere in those codes.

The filing fee, in dollars, anywhere. No state page read for this article publishes one, because the insurer sets it. Anyone quoting a national filing-fee figure is quoting a company's price list, not a state's.

Whether the ignition interlock lease itself costs a fixed amount anywhere. No state page or statute read for this article publishes a price for installing, leasing or removing a device. Washington and Virginia publish charges of their own that sit on top of it; Minnesota publishes a duty on the vendor to discount for indigent participants but no figure for either the discounted or the ordinary rate. The device price is set by a private company, like the filing fee, and no official source read here states one.

Whether any state other than Texas and Michigan has repealed a driver-surcharge programme. Those two were read in full for this revision because they are the ones most often cited as still running. The other forty-eight were not surveyed, and no claim about them appears above.

Whether MCL 257.732a is the section that once imposed Michigan's driver responsibility fee, and how much the repeal forgave. MCL 257.732a as it now stands shows a section with no driver charge in it and an allocation formula in its place, and its history line records amendments by 2018 Acts 43, 45, 46 and 50. The text of those Acts was not opened for this page, so the mechanics of the forgiveness — who was relieved of what, and on what date — are not stated here. The section was read in an Internet Archive capture because legislature.mi.gov refuses connections from this server.

Whether Washington's interlock assistance is funded in the current biennium. The statute makes the help conditional twice over — "only after appropriation" in RCW 46.68.340 and "when funds are available" in RCW 46.20.385(6)(b) — and no appropriation act or departmental rule was read to establish whether money is available now.

Whether Virginia's alcohol safety action program fee is the whole programme cost. Section 18.2-271.1(B) sets the entry fee at no less than $250 and no more than $300, and then adds that "fees as may reasonably be required of defendants referred for intervention under any such program may be charged." What those intervention fees come to was not published on any source read for this page.

Whether any state besides New Jersey and New York bills a multi-year assessment of this kind in 2026. Establishing that would need all fifty agencies read, which this page has not done. What was established for this revision is narrower and useful: two of the programmes most often named alongside them, in Texas and Michigan, no longer bill anyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average cost of SR-22 insurance? There is no published average that would be useful for budgeting, and this page prints none: the premium is set per driver, per state and per insurer, and no state publishes one. What is published, and what this page collects instead, is the rest of the bill — the statutory limits you are obliged to buy (from $10,000 of per-person bodily injury in ordinary Florida to $100,000 after a Florida DUI under Fla. Stat. § 324.023), the annual surcharges New Jersey and New York bill for three years, and the one-off reinstatement fees your agency publishes. On top of those sits the premium, and the only way to get yours is three quotes on your own record with the violation disclosed.

Why is SR-22 insurance so expensive, and is the filing fee the reason? Not the filing fee, which is a one-off charge set by the insurer rather than the state — no state page read for this article publishes an amount for it, because the state does not charge it. The expense has two sources. One is the reclassification: once you are rated high-risk, the whole underlying premium is recalculated. The other is that in some cases the law makes you buy more insurance, not just dearer insurance — Florida's § 324.023 raises the required per-person bodily injury limit tenfold after a DUI conviction, and those higher limits must be carried for a minimum period of three years.

Are there costs the state charges me directly that no quote will show? Yes, in some states, and they are published. New Jersey bills an annual surcharge for three years — $250 a year for no liability insurance on a motor vehicle, $1,000 a year for a first or second DUI, $100 a year for driving unlicensed — and its own brochure says these are in addition to any court-imposed fines and penalties or any premiums that may be assessed by insurance companies. New York's Driver Responsibility Assessment runs $250 a year for three years for an alcohol- or drug-related conviction and $100 a year for six points. Both suspend the licence for non-payment, independently of whether your SR-22 filing is current, and neither appears in any insurance quote.