There is a familiar problem where an official page is simply old: the law moved and nobody edited the page. This is the harder version. Two sources, both official, both belonging to the same state, giving different answers to the same question on the same day. Not a third-party guide against the state — the state against itself.
You only see this if you read the statute. Summarize the agency’s page and the contradiction is invisible by construction, because you have copied one side of it. Every case below is something we hit reading the primary law for all 51 jurisdictions.
1. West Virginia: the handbook cites the statute it contradicts
The DMV’s own Driver’s Licensing Handbook says a reportable crash must be reported “within five (5) days,” and it cites § 17C-4-6 for the proposition. Open § 17C-4-6: it says immediately, by the quickest means of communication, with no grace period in the section at all.
This is the purest form of the problem: the citation and the sentence it supports sit in one paragraph and disagree. A driver who trusts the handbook waits four days and is four days late. See West Virginia’s reporting page.
2. Vermont: two agencies, two answers
How long must a Vermont driver keep an SR-22 on file? The Department of Financial Regulation’s SR-22 page tells consumers it is “three years from the date of the event.” The DMV’s reinstatement page says one year.
One year is right. Act 170 of 2020 cut the ordinary filing period from three years to one, effective January 1, 2021, with three years surviving only for a short list — careless and negligent operation resulting in death, reckless driving resulting in death, and a second or subsequent DUI. So Vermont publishes both the rule in force and the repealed one, from two departments, with nothing on either page to say which is which. See Vermont’s SR-22 page.
3. The District of Columbia: the same number, read two different ways
D.C. charges an uninsured owner a civil fine whether or not the car was driven. DC DMV’s fee page states it as “$150.00/day for days 1-30.”
The statute sets $150 for the whole first 30 days, with the $7 daily rate beginning only after that. The agency version is thirty times the law for a short lapse.
Nothing here is stale — both texts describe the rule in force. One of them read a rate where the statute wrote a flat amount. See the District’s uninsured-driving page.
4. Rhode Island: the disagreement is in a regulation
This one is not a web page. Rhode Island DMV’s compulsory insurance regulation, 280-RICR-30-10-2, effective January 4, 2022, says the fine for driving uninsured is $500 for the first and second offenses.
That figure matches neither statute. Section 31-47-12(f), the one an ordinary driver meets, sets $100 to $250 and a suspension of up to thirty days for a first offense; the wider § 31-47-9(a)(1) is a different offense requiring knowledge. The regulation also still cites § 31-47-8.1 for its authority — a section the legislature repealed in 2021.
A regulation is not a FAQ. It went through rulemaking and has an effective date, and it is still wrong about the statute it implements. See Rhode Island’s uninsured-driving page.
5. Delaware: a category, not a number
Numbers are the easy kind of conflict, because you can line them up. Delaware’s is worse. The Department of Insurance’s own Auto Insurance Guide lists uninsured motorist coverage under “Optional Coverage.” Under 18 Del. C. § 3902(a) that coverage must be in every policy at the financial responsibility minimums, and it drops out only if a named insured signs the insurer’s rejection form. It is standard coverage you have to sign away, not an extra you have to buy — so a reader who skips the “Optional” section never learns they already have it, or that somebody may have signed it off for them. See Delaware’s minimum coverage page.
6. The license clock: Connecticut, and a Louisiana case that only looks like one
Connecticut § 14-36(b)(2) lets you drive on a valid out-of-state license for sixty days after you establish residency; past that, § 14-36(a) makes it driving without a Connecticut license. The DMV’s own license transfer page says ninety. Sixty is the number with a statute behind it. See Connecticut’s moving-to page.
Louisiana looks identical at a glance and is not. OMV requires the out-of-state license to be transferred within 30 days of establishing domicile; R.S. 32:404(A) lets someone drive here on a valid home-state license for up to 90 days. Both are true, because they answer different questions. The 90 days is an exemption for people who are still nonresidents; the 30 days is the deadline once you have made Louisiana home. Treat the 90 as your allowance and you are sixty days late. This is the case that makes the rule harder than “trust the statute.” See Louisiana’s moving-to page.
The smallest version needs only one document. Kentucky’s DRIVE page prints two registration deadlines on a single screen — “within 10 days of establishing residency” and “within 15 days.” Only 15 has a statute behind it (KRS 186.020(1), 186A.095). See Kentucky’s moving-to page.
Why this happens
None of this is carelessness. It is what the two production processes predict.
A statute changes on a date the legislature chooses. An agency page was written once, by a program office, to explain the law as it stood that year — and nothing in the amendment process touches it. There is no step in enacting a bill that opens the FAQ. So the page drifts out of agreement one amendment at a time, and each drift survives until somebody happens to reread that paragraph.
Two examples of the mechanism in plain view:
- Montana, House Bill 133 of 2017 struck “or by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than 10 days, or both” from the first-offense sentence for driving uninsured. The Motor Vehicle Division’s insurance FAQ and the Montana Driver Manual both still carry the deleted jail term. The amendment removed a clause; it did not visit the documents quoting it. See Montana.
- Idaho, H.B. 284 rewrote the lapse-notice section in 2023 to give 60 days and then a final notice with 10 more. ITD’s vehicle insurance page still describes one warning with 30 days. See Idaho.
The statute side is not immune either, which is what breaks the simple rule. Louisiana Act 179 of 2026 doubled the DWI reinstatement fees to $200, $400 and $600 on August 1, 2026. When we checked, the statute text on the legislature’s own site and OMV’s page both still showed $100, $200 and $300. “Prefer the statute” cannot mean “prefer the statute page.” It means read the act.
Note which direction the error runs, too. New Mexico MVD’s page gives you 30 days to answer a verification letter; § 66-5-205.1(E) gives you twenty days from the mailing to answer or request a hearing. The agency’s number is the friendlier one, which is what makes it expensive — miss the statutory window and you lose the hearing, not just the argument. See New Mexico.
Where the agency is right
Our curation rule puts primary sources first: statute, then state agency page, then everything else. That ordering applies only to the same question. Some questions belong to the agency as a matter of law, and deferring to the statute there produces a wrong answer confidently.
What the document is called. State codes almost never say “SR-22.” Alaska’s says proof may be furnished “by filing with the department the written certificate of an insurance carrier” (AS 28.20.410); Maine’s says a certificate from an insurance or surety company (29-A M.R.S. § 1605(3)(A)); Missouri, Oregon and Washington phrase it the same way. The name exists because the agencies use it, so there is nothing to overrule — the agency names the paper. See Alaska and Maine.
Fees the legislature told the agency to set. South Carolina § 56-10-520(D) sets a $600 base reinstatement fee that the Department of Insurance re-sets each year by order; Order No. 2025-006 put it at $700 for calendar 2026, with a new figure due each October. Quoting $600 is reading the right document for the wrong question. See South Carolina.
Thresholds under delegated authority. Colorado § 42-4-310(1)(a)(I)(C) sets four model years as the emissions-exemption floor and lets the Air Quality Control Commission extend it. The Commission extended gasoline vehicles to seven, which is what the Division of Motor Vehicles applies. The statute says four, the DMV says seven, and the DMV is right, because the statute handed the number over. See Colorado.
So the usable test is not which source but whose question it is. What conduct is an offense, what the penalty range is, how long a deadline or a filing runs — the legislature decides, and the statute wins. What the form is called, what the calendar year’s fee is, which counties test on what cycle, which office you walk into — the agency decides, and the agency wins.
What to do when they disagree
- Sort the question first. Deadline, penalty, or what counts as an offense? Statute question. Form name, the year’s posted fee, office, inspection cycle? Agency question. Most of the confusion above dissolves here.
- For a statute question, find the act, not just the code page. Louisiana is the warning: a code section on a legislature’s own website can lag an enacted bill by months.
- Plan around the tighter number. Sixty days in Connecticut, not ninety. Twenty days in New Mexico, not thirty. Fourteen days to cure a Kentucky lapse, not the ninety the Cabinet’s own description implies. Being early costs nothing; being late costs the hearing.
- Keep the agency page anyway. The clerk at the counter, and often the court, works from it. Knowing what it says is how you anticipate the argument; the statute citation is how you end it.
- Save both, with dates. The agency page and the section text, each dated, is the whole record you need if the two are ever held against each other.
This is why every figure here carries the source it came from and the date it was last checked, and why a note says so outright when the statute and the state’s own page disagree — you probably read that page before you got here. Each state also has a statute index listing the sections behind its values, and the methodology page sets out the source ordering and its limits.
If you find a figure here that has drifted, that is a bug, and we would rather hear about it.