The 15-Day Deadline to Save Your Texas Driver's License

How the 15 Days Are Counted

Texas law gives you 15 days from the date you received your Notice of Suspension to request an Administrative License Revocation hearing, and the day you received it counts as day one. Miss that deadline and the suspension begins automatically on the 40th day after notice, without any hearing, without any opportunity to challenge the officer’s conduct, and without any record that might help your criminal case later. There is no extension. There is no second chance. The 15-day window is the hardest deadline in Texas DWI law.

The counting rule trips people up. The day the officer handed you the notice counts as day one, not the day after. So, an arrest on the first of the month means the window closes on the fifteenth, not the sixteenth. Nothing in the statute adds time for weekends or holidays, so treat every calendar day as counting and file early rather than testing the edge. The deadline is about when DPS receives the request, not when you send it.

Counting It Out: A Worked Example

The rule is one sentence, and people still get it wrong by one day. The day the notice was served is day one. Not the day after. Everything below is that sentence applied to a calendar.

Example one, a clean month. The officer serves the notice on March 3. March 3 is day one. Counting forward, day 15 is March 17. That is the last day DPS can receive the hearing request. If no request arrives, the suspension takes effect on its own 40 days after March 3, which is April 12.

Example two, crossing a month. The notice is served on October 24. October 24 is day one, so day 7 is October 30, day 8 is October 31, and the count continues into November. Day 15 is November 7. The month boundary changes nothing about the math; only the number of days in the month you started in.

The off-by-one that costs licenses. If you count March 3 as day zero and start at March 4, you land on March 18 and file a day late. There is no grace for an honest miscount, and a request that arrives on day 16 is simply late.

Build in transit time. The deadline is about when DPS receives the request, not when you send it. A request mailed on day 14 has not met the deadline; a request DPS receives on day 14 has. If you are near the edge, use a route that lands the same day and keep the proof: a fax confirmation sheet, a certified mail receipt, or an online confirmation.

If day 15 lands on a weekend or a holiday. Do not assume it slides to the next business day. Nothing in the rule adds time, so treat the earlier date as the real one and file before the weekend rather than after it.

How to Request the Hearing (Mail, Fax, Phone, Online)

There are four routes, and DPS must receive the request through one of them inside the window:

• By mail: TX DPS/Driver Improvement Bureau, P.O. Box 4040, Austin, Texas 78765-4040. Send it certified with a return receipt and keep a copy.
• By fax: (512) 424-2650. Keep the fax confirmation sheet; it is your proof the request was made on time if anything gets lost.
• By phone: (800) 394-9913. This is the weakest option, because a lost phone request is nearly impossible to prove later.
• Online: through the ALR page on the DPS website (Recommended)

Have this information ready before you start: your full legal name, date of birth, driver’s license number and the state that issued it, the date and county of the arrest, the arresting agency and officer, and whether your case is a test failure or a refusal. You will be asked to choose a hearing type, but every ALR hearing is held virtually regardless of what is requested.

One detail that matters more than it looks: if any piece of information is unknown, write “unknown” rather than leaving the field blank. A request with blanks can be rejected. If DPS does reject a request, it must tell you in writing, and you can correct and resubmit as long as the correction still arrives inside the original deadline.

What the DIC-25 Is Now and What It No Longer Is

The paper the officer handed you is the DIC-25, and its title says exactly what it is: a Notice of Suspension. A lot of older articles, and plenty of competitor pages, still describe it as something more. That description is out of date.

Before September 2023 the form served a second function while your hearing was pending, and officers confiscated your plastic driver’s license when they served it. Both practices ended when the form was updated. Today the DIC-25 is a notice and nothing else. Officers no longer take your license and you keep the plastic card in your wallet. If you read somewhere that the paper is what lets you drive, you are reading the old rule. What actually protects your driving is covered two sections down.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

If no hearing is requested inside the 15 days, the suspension takes effect automatically 40 days after you received, or are presumed to have received, the notice. There is no hearing, no judge, and no argument. The suspension length depends on whether your case is a refusal or a failure and on your history, detailed on How Long Your License Is Suspended.

Missing the window costs more than the license. It also gives up the ALR hearing itself, which is the earliest chance to put the arresting officer under oath and the earliest look at the State’s evidence, both explained on The ALR Hearing. If the deadline has already passed, do not conclude the whole case is lost. The criminal case is untouched by the missed request, and there is a path back to legal driving through an occupational driver’s license. Start with Is It Too Late?

Why Requesting the Hearing Lets You Keep Driving

A timely hearing request stays the suspension. Nothing happens to your license until the administrative judge rules, which is typically weeks to months away. That stay is the reason most people keep driving normally after a DWI arrest, and it comes from the request, not from any document in your pocket.

That distinction matters because the old advice, carry the paper and it covers you for 40 days, no longer describes how the system works. Request the hearing on time and your driving privileges hold through the pendency of the case. You are welcome to keep your notice of hearing with you while driving as proof the request was made, but the legal protection is the stay itself.

Gave Blood Voluntarily? Your Deadline Works Differently

The 15-day clock starts with the DIC-25, and in a voluntary blood case there is no DIC-25 that night, because the result does not exist yet. If the lab later reports 0.08 or higher, DPS mails a notice instead, and a different window opens with a trap built into how receipt is counted. If your case is a blood case, read Your Blood Case and the 20-Day Notice before you count any days.