How We Verify Every Page

Every load-bearing fact on this site traces to a primary source: the state's statute or the agency that administers its licenses. This page explains exactly how each page gets made and checked, what "last verified" means and how you can flag an error.

Two independent passes on every state

We research each state twice, in separate passes. The first pass reads the statute and the licensing agency's guidance and writes the facts: the first-offense suspension, the hearing window, the reinstatement steps, the interlock rules, the insurance filing, the program requirement, the fees and the lookback period. A second pass then re-derives the load-bearing facts from scratch, without leaning on the first. Any disagreement gets resolved against the primary source, with a third look on the highest-stakes calls. Interlock-vendor pages and national summaries are treated as corroboration only, never as the source of a fact.

What the second pass catches

The independent check is not a formality. On this build it corrected material errors in roughly half the states before anything published. Four examples from the current sweep:

• West Virginia: the first pass described West Virginia's administrative hearing system in the present tense. The check showed the state abolished administrative license revocation effective July 1, 2020, so license consequences now flow from the court conviction alone. The page was rebuilt against the current statute text and a third look held the correction.
• Iowa: the first pass carried Iowa's 2007-era BAC-tiered interlock rules. A 2024 law, effective January 1, 2025, replaced them with a uniform interlock requirement for any first-offense temporary restricted license. The correction was confirmed word for word against the official Iowa Code text.
• Idaho: two readings of Idaho's SR-22 duration were both wrong. One pulled 1 year from a subsection that covers insurance infractions, while secondary sites said 3 years without sourcing it. The statute's DUI subsection settles it at a flat 3 years.
• Arkansas: the first pass attributed an SR-22 requirement to an agency page that never mentions the filing. Rather than let a sourced-looking claim stand, the page now marks the detail unconfirmed and routes you to the agency.

When a source will not load

Some official sites block automated reading or publish nothing at all. Montana's motor vehicle pages refused every read during research, so that page leans on mirrored statute text and says so. West Virginia's reinstatement portal publishes no fee amounts and directs callers to a phone line, so the page reports that rather than adopting a secondary source's guess. A gap stated plainly beats a figure we cannot stand behind.

Verified and partial pages

Each state page carries one of two honesty levels. A verified page had every load-bearing fact confirmed against a primary source on both passes. A partial page has one or more details we could not fully confirm; each one is flagged exactly where it appears on the page, phrased as what to confirm with the agency. The most common gap nationwide is the SR-22 duration, which most licensing agencies never publish on their own pages.

What "last verified" means and how often we re-check

The date on each page is the day we last read that page's rules against the source. DUI and reinstatement rules change by legislative session, so we re-check on a set schedule and whenever we learn of a change, then update the page and log it in the law-updates changelog. The changelog only marks a change as in effect once its effective date has arrived and we have confirmed it against a primary source.

Tell us if we are wrong

If a rule on any page looks out of date or does not match what your state told you, we want to fix it fast. Report an error here and point us at the source. Getting these pages right is the whole point of the project.

An independent reference project, not a state agency or law firm. Educational information, not legal advice. Confirm the current rules with your state before you act.