DUI News

I had someone ask me the other day what the difference was between an SR22 filing and an FR44 filing in Florida because they had just recently had their license suspended in Florida for DUI and had also just recently moved to Florida and had never heard the term FR44 filing before.

The reason most people have never heard this phrase before is because there are currently only two states that have implemented the use of the FR44 filing form in place of the more common SR22 filing form for DUI offenders and those states are Florida and Virginia.

The use of the new FR44 form for DUI offenders in Florida went into affect on February 02, 2008. The change to the FR44 filing instead of the more common SR22 filing that DUI offenders are more familiar with was a retroactive change meaning that anyone with a DUI as old as 10/01/07 who was still required to maintain an SR22 filing with the Florida DMV had to basically upgrade their filing to the new FR44 filing.

Unlike the SR22 form where the “S & R” do not stand for anything, the “F & R” in the FR44 form stand for “Financial Responsibility”, which makes sense since the SR22 filing is always referred to as “showing proof of financial responsibility”.

The big difference between the SR22 & the FR44 filing in Florida is in the liability limits of the insurance policy. Under the SR22 filing in Florida the liability limits were as follows:

$10,000/$20,000 bodily injury per occurrence
$10,000 property damage per occurrence

When you are looking at those coverage limits, those are some bare bones limits in my opinion. Just one accident could easily cap anyone of those coverage limits.

Take for instances if you were in an accident and the other vehicle was a brand new Mercedes SL550, which sells new for around $100,000 ouch, you can eat up your $10,000 property damage in the blink of an eye.

Now the FR44 filing requirement for DUI offenders in Florida has increased liability limits and those limits are:

$100,000/$300,000 bodily injury per occurrence
$50,000 property damage per occurrence

So now if you were in that same accident with that price Mercedes SL-550 you stand a better chance of being able to cover the damage limits.

And frankly with the ever increasing costs of vehicles nowadays it just makes sense to carry high liability limits just in case. I know on my auto insurance I carry limits of 100/300/100 so I have $100,000 property damage coverage per occurrence.

I know some people choose to carry the least amount of insurance coverage as possible, but I sleep better at night knowing that if I am in an accident I am going to be covered.