Penalties for Driving Without Insurance in Hawaii
A first offense for driving uninsured in Hawaii carries a fine of $500. License or registration suspension: 3 months first, 1 year repeat — or keep insurance in force 6 months.
- First offense — fine
- $500
A flat $500, not a range. The court may suspend all or part of it if you show up with a current policy, and on request may order 75 to 100 hours of community service instead. A separate general provision fines any other violation of the no-fault article between $100 and $5,000.
- Subsequent offense — fine
- At least $2,000
A floor, not a fixed amount: "a minimum of $2,000 for each subsequent offense that occurs within a five-year period from any prior offense". The floor was $1,500 until Act 138 of 2024 raised it on July 1, 2024. For a second offense the court may substitute 200 to 275 hours of community service; for later offenses community service is available at the court's discretion.
- License / registration suspension
- 3 months first, 1 year repeat — or keep insurance in force 6 months
On top of the fine the court must do one of two things: suspend the driver's or registered owner's license for three months on a first conviction and one year on a repeat within five years, or require the driver or owner to keep a nonrefundable policy in force for six months. Driving uninsured is not a traffic infraction under chapter 291D, so it is handled as a criminal case rather than by mail.
- Vehicle impoundment
- On multiple convictions within 5 years
For multiple convictions inside a five-year window the court must add at least one of: up to thirty days' imprisonment, suspension or revocation of the vehicle's registration plates, or impoundment — or impoundment and sale — of the vehicle for storage and seizure costs. A first offense does not reach impoundment.
- Annual surcharge
- None
Haw. Rev. Stat. § 431:10C-117 sets a fine, a license sanction and, for repeat offenders, impoundment. It creates no annual surcharge of the kind some states bolt onto the license for years after the conviction.
- SR-22 required afterwards
- No
Unusual, and worth checking against whatever your insurer tells you. Two provisions push driving uninsured out of the SR-22 system: § 287-20(a) says the proof requirement does not apply to "the first conviction within a five-year period for driving without a valid motor vehicle insurance policy", and § 431:10C-117(a)(3)(A) says that a driver or registered owner whose license the court suspends for this offense "shall not be required to obtain proof of financial responsibility pursuant to section 287-20". What the court can order instead is six months of insurance kept in force under § 431:10C-117(a)(3)(B).
Hawaii sets $500 — higher than 23 of the 35 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $30 to $1,500.
How Hawaii compares with every other state
What it actually costs
A first offense is a flat $500. The flat figure is deceptive, because the fine is rarely the expensive part of driving uninsured in Hawaii.
The part that stops you driving tomorrow is not the fine but the suspension: 3 months first, 1 year repeat — or keep insurance in force 6 months. The car itself is exposed too — on multiple convictions within 5 years. Buying a policy the next morning is not the same as being restored — restoring the license or the registration is its own step, and the figures above are what it takes.
Every statute cited for Hawaii
What changed
July 1, 2024
Minimum fine for a repeat no-insurance conviction rose from $1,500 to $2,000
Part I of the same Act 138 amended Haw. Rev. Stat. § 431:10C-117(a)(2)(B). The enrolled text brackets "$1,500" and underscores "$2,000" as the minimum fine "for each subsequent offense that occurs within a five-year period from any prior offense"; the $500 first-offense fine was left alone. This part took effect July 1, 2024. Note that the figure is a floor with no ceiling stated in that subparagraph, so sources that print it as a flat $2,000 are reading it too narrowly. The court may still suspend all or part of the fine if the defendant produces a current policy, and may substitute 200 to 275 hours of community service on a second offense.
Act 138, Session Laws of Hawaii 2024 (S.B. 2342), §§ 2 and 7
Why the rule looks like this
- What Changed in 2026Liability minimums doubled in Hawaii, two states dropped pure comparative fault, New Hampshire stopped inspecting cars, and three crash reporting thresholds moved — a dated account of the 2026 changes, and the ones already signed for 2027 and beyond.
- The Fine Is the Cheapest PartA first-offense fine for driving uninsured runs from $30 in Florida to a $1,500 floor in Delaware — but South Carolina's $100 fine arrives with a $700 reinstatement fee, and the reinstatement is usually the bigger number.
- When a State Contradicts ItselfA state's statute and that same state's own agency page often give different answers on the same day. Seven cases we hit reading all 51 jurisdictions, why it happens, and where the agency is the one that's right.
- What a Gap in Coverage Actually CostsA lapse is billed differently in every state — by the day in New York and Maryland, by the reinstatement in Florida, by a registration fee in Tennessee, by a $600 noncompliance fee in Virginia, and in Ohio by a fine that does not appear at all.
More on Hawaii
Checked against the primary sources above on September 28, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.