Ask Deandra: How Much Will a DWI Raise My Car Insurance?

Here is the longer answer, including why insurers price it this way and what you can do about it.

Why Insurers Treat a DWI So Harshly

Auto insurers price risk using actuarial data, not moral judgment, and their data shows that a DWI correlates strongly with future claims. Many carriers weight it more heavily than an at-fault accident or a string of speeding tickets, because they read it as a pattern rather than a single lapse. That is why the increase tends to be larger and longer lasting than what follows most other violations.

Texas gives them a wide berth to do it. Section 2251.052 of the Insurance Code tells insurers what they must consider when setting rates and then allows any other factor the insurer decides is relevant, so long as the rate is not excessive, inadequate, unreasonable or unfairly discriminatory. Texas is also a file and use state, which means a carrier may use a filed rate on the day it files it, before anyone at the state has approved it. There is no Texas law capping how much a carrier may surcharge for a DWI and no law requiring the surcharge to end after a set number of years. Every one of those decisions belongs to the individual company, which is exactly why the same driver gets very different answers from different carriers.

What the Increase Actually Looks Like

• Roughly 50 to 60 percent, not double. The rate comparison studies that break Texas out separately land in a consistent band. Texas comes in below the national average, where the same studies report figures in the 65 to 90 percent range. The number you should plan around is somewhere near half again as much as you are paying now, on a full coverage policy. Liability-only policies tend to move less in dollar terms and sometimes less in percentage terms too. None of this comes from the state. The Texas Department of Insurance publishes no figure for what a DWI does to a premium, so treat every number you see, including these, as a market estimate rather than an official one.
• Non-renewal. Some standard insurers simply decline to renew after a DWI, regardless of how long you have been with them. Under Section 551.105 of the Insurance Code they have to give you 60 days’ written notice before the policy expires, and if they miss that deadline you have the right to renew. That notice period is your shopping window and most people waste it.
• Forced move to nonstandard carriers. Drivers who lose standard coverage often land with a nonstandard insurer that specializes in high risk policies, typically at a materially higher rate. If no voluntary carrier will write you at all, the Texas Automobile Insurance Plan Association is the market of last resort. You qualify by certifying that two companies rejected you in the last 60 days, and your signed statement on the application is enough. Two things to know before you go there: coverage is minimum limits only, and the cancellation and non-renewal protections in the Insurance Code do not apply to association policies.
• The whole household can move with you. This is the part that surprises families. Most carriers re-rate or decline to renew the entire policy once one driver on it has a DWI, so every driver and every vehicle goes along, and a household that carries auto and home with the same company can lose the multi-line discount at the same time. That is underwriting practice rather than law, and it varies by company.
• The SR-22 rides on top, and it is not the expensive part. If your license action requires an SR-22, the filing sits on top of an already elevated premium. The filing fee itself is small. The premium does the damage.

One thing that is not an insurance cost at all: the mandatory state fine under Section 709.001 of the Transportation Code, which is $3,000 on a first conviction within a 36 month period, $4,500 on a second or subsequent within that window, and $6,000 where the analysis showed an alcohol concentration of 0.15 or more. That is a court fine paid to the state, not a surcharge from your insurer. It replaced the old Driver Responsibility Program surcharges, which were repealed in 2019 and are gone. Our breakdown of what a DWI actually costs in Texas puts all of it side by side.

How Long the Increase Lasts

Most insurers use a three to five year lookback when pricing a renewal, so the DWI stays visible to underwriting long after the court obligations, the probation and the interlock, have ended. Some drivers see gradual improvement each renewal as the case ages inside that window. Others see nothing change until it drops out entirely. At least one national rate study reports Texas carriers looking back as far as ten years.

Keep three different clocks separate:

• The insurer’s rating window. Three to five years for most companies, longer for some. Set by the carrier, not by the state, and different at every company. That is the whole reason shopping works.
• The SR-22 filing. Two years from the conviction date, and a fixed obligation with a defined end.
• The driving record itself. Effectively permanent. Under 37 TAC Section 15.101 convictions that trigger an automatic license suspension are kept indefinitely, and a DWI conviction is one of them under Section 521.341. The record does not age off. What ages off is the carrier’s willingness to charge you for it.

The honest framing is that the fines and the filing are finite and the record is permanent, while the premium increase sits in between: real, expensive, and ending on a date your insurance company chooses rather than one the law sets.

What Your Insurer Can Actually See

Before the question of conviction versus deferred adjudication makes any sense, it helps to know how the information reaches an insurer, because it does not work the way most people assume.

Nobody reports your case to your insurance company. There is no notification that goes out when you are convicted. What happens is that the insurer pulls your motor vehicle record, which Section 730.007 of the Transportation Code expressly permits an insurer to obtain for rating and underwriting. Carriers do this routinely at renewal. So the question is never whether something was reported. It is what is sitting on the record when they look.

Two separate databases matter here. The driving record is maintained under the Transportation Code and is built from convictions and license actions: Section 521.042 directs the department to record the court’s abstract of each conviction, and suspensions are indexed alongside them. Criminal history is a different system entirely, maintained under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and Article 66.252 requires the court clerk to report the disposition of every case to the department. A disposition includes a deferred adjudication.

• A conviction is visible. Recorded as a conviction, kept indefinitely, and available to an insurer.
• The administrative suspension is visible. The suspension from the arrest sits on the computerized driving record. We know it is there because Section 524.015 and Section 724.048 both direct the department to remove references to it in the one situation where that is required. Even the most basic driving record product shows license status.
• Whether a deferred adjudication itself appears on the driving record is not settled. The driving record is built around convictions, and a deferred is not one, so there is a reasonable argument it does not post there. No statute or rule requires it to, and nothing we could find establishes that it does. It is not a point to rely on, and the next section explains why.

Does It Matter Whether the Case Ends in a Conviction or a Deferred Adjudication?

The hopeful version goes like this: a deferred adjudication avoids a formal conviction, so it avoids the insurance consequences a conviction triggers. The trouble is the last half of that sentence. There is no insurance reporting event to avoid. The insurer pulls your record, and what a deferred does not do is clear the record.

• The suspension survives it. Section 524.015 and Section 724.048 both say the disposition of the criminal charge does not affect the administrative suspension, and the only exception either statute writes in is an acquittal. A deferred is not an acquittal. Neither is a reduction and neither is a dismissal. So, the alcohol-related suspension can still be sitting on your driving record when an underwriter looks, no matter how well the criminal case turned out.
• It still counts as a conviction for enhancement. Under Section 49.09(g) a person placed on deferred adjudication for a DWI is considered convicted if there is ever a next case. There is no clean slate for enhancement purposes.
• It is normally an interlock case. Article 42A.408 requires the judge to order an ignition interlock as a condition of a DWI deferred, subject to a narrow waiver.
• Sealing it later does not reach the driving record. If you qualify for an order of nondisclosure under Section 411.0726 two years after the discharge, that order seals criminal history records. It does not touch the driving record, which is a different database under a different code. And for what it is worth, Section 411.0765 lists the agencies that may still receive sealed criminal history information, and private insurers were never on it, so they were not seeing that record in the first place.

None of which makes a deferred a bad outcome. It is usually a very good one, for reasons that have nothing to do with insurance. The point is narrower: do not choose one on the assumption that it keeps the matter away from your carrier. The outcome that actually protects the driving record is winning the administrative hearing.

What You Can Demand When a Carrier Raises the Rate or Drops You

Texas gives you more here than most people use, and one of these rules is brand new.

• They cannot cancel you mid-term just for the conviction. Section 551.104 makes its list of cancellation grounds exclusive, and a conviction is not on it. What is on it, at subsection (d), is a driver whose license has been suspended, which is what a DWI usually produces. Even then, cancellation takes 10 days’ notice, and the same subsection says the insurer may not cancel if you consent to an endorsement excluding the suspended driver from coverage. That is a real option most families are never offered. Understand what it means before you take it: an excluded driver who then drives the car is completely uninsured.
• They have to tell you why, and they have to do it without being asked. This changed on January 1, 2026. House Bill 2067 rewrote the Insurance Code so that an insurer that declines an application, cancels, or refuses to renew must provide a written statement of the reasons, and it must name the precise incident or risk factor and the source of the information the company relied on. It used to be available only on request. Now it comes to you. That source line is the useful part, because it tells you what record to go check.
• You can see the report and correct it. Where the carrier used a consumer report, which for driving records and claims history is nearly always, federal law at 15 U.S.C. Section 1681m requires the insurer to give you the name and contact information of the reporting agency, tell you about your right to a free copy of the report, and tell you about your right to dispute anything inaccurate or incomplete in it. Records do contain errors, and a wrong entry is worth finding before you pay for it for five years.
• Asking a question is not a claim. Section 551.113 bars an insurer from using a customer inquiry as a basis for declining, cancelling or refusing to renew a personal auto policy. You can call and ask how something would be handled without that call itself counting against you.
• You are entitled to the Consumer Bill of Rights. Under 28 TAC Section 5.9970 every insurer writing personal auto in Texas has to deliver the Consumer Bill of Rights for Personal Automobile Insurance with each new policy and with renewal notices. Most people throw it away. It is the plainest summary of what your carrier can and cannot do.

What You Can Actually Do About the Cost

• Shop every renewal, and use the state’s own tool. Rates for the same driver vary enormously across carriers, and because the lookback window is a company decision rather than a legal one, the company that is cheapest for you this year may not be next year. The Texas Department of Insurance and the Office of Public Insurance Counsel run a free rate comparison site at HelpInsure, and driving record is one of the inputs, so it will price you as you actually are. It does not include every carrier, so treat it as a starting point rather than the whole market.
• Start shopping the day the non-renewal notice arrives. That notice has to come 60 days before the policy expires. Sixty days is enough time to work the market properly. Two weeks is not.
• Ask about high risk specialists. Some carriers specialize in exactly this population and price it better than a standard company writing a policy it would rather not have.
• Ask for the discounts anyway. A DWI does not disqualify you from the ordinary levers. The department publishes a list of ways to lower an auto premium covering low mileage and telematics programs, autopay and paperless, raising the deductible, and dropping collision on an older paid-off car. Those still work on an elevated base rate, and on a base rate this high they are worth more in dollars than they would normally be.
• Keep every other mark off your record. A second violation, even a small one, compounds pricing in a way it would not for a driver without this history. A clean record matters more than usual during this window.
• Understand how the criminal case resolves, and fight the license case first. Whether the case ends in a conviction, a reduction or a dismissal changes what goes on the record. But the administrative case is the one that puts a suspension on the driving record, and it runs on its own much faster clock. Requesting the hearing within 15 days of notice is the single most time-sensitive thing you can do about your long-term insurance cost.
• If something looks wrong, complain. The department takes consumer complaints about insurers and publishes company complaint records. Its consumer help line is 800-252-3439, and it is worth calling to check a company’s complaint record before you buy, not only after something goes wrong.

DWI Defense at Deandra Grant Law

Deandra Grant Law represents clients across Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, Allen, Lewisville, Denton, Rockwall, and Waco. Deandra M. Grant, J.D., M.S. in Pharmaceutical Science, holds the ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist designation and is the author of the Texas DWI Manual.

If you are trying to understand how a pending DWI could affect your insurance long term, call Deandra Grant Law at (214) 225-7117 or visit texasdwisite.com. Remember: you have only 15 days from the date you are served with your Notice of Suspension to request an ALR hearing, and how the underlying case resolves can directly shape what an insurer sees on your record for years to come.

Have a DWI question you want answered in this series? Submit it at texasdwisite.com and it may be featured in a future Ask Deandra post.