Penalties for Driving Without Insurance in North Dakota
A first offense for driving uninsured in North Dakota carries a fine of $150. License or registration suspension: Not automatic on a first offense — but 12 or more points suspends.
- First offense — fine
- $150
A flat statutory fee, not a range. Driving without liability insurance is a noncriminal moving violation in North Dakota, and § 39-06.1-06(2)(l) fixes the fee at $150. Until 2015 it was an infraction carrying a non-suspendable fine of at least $150; SB 2211 moved the amount into the statutory fee schedule. A city may prosecute under an equivalent ordinance instead.
- Subsequent offense — fine
- $300
$300 for a second or subsequent violation within three years. The court must also order the plates of the vehicle the person owned and was driving to be impounded, and refusing to hand the plates over is a class B misdemeanor in its own right.
- License / registration suspension
- Not automatic on a first offense — but 12 or more points suspends
There is no fixed suspension period for driving uninsured. Three things can still take the license. Failing to keep the required one-year certificate of insurance on file suspends driving privileges outright. The violation itself carries 6 points, rising to 12 if the driver already violated § 39-08-20 within the previous 18 months, and 14 if it came to light while police investigated a crash in which the driver owned the vehicle — and 12 points brings a 7-day suspension, with 7 more days for each point above 11. Separately, the registration of the vehicle is suspended or revoked until security is provided.
- Vehicle impoundment
- Plates impounded on a second offense
The car is not towed, but on a second or subsequent violation the court orders the number plates of the vehicle owned and driven at the time to be surrendered. They go to the arresting officer's department and come back only once the driver shows proof of insurance and pays a $20 fee to the court.
- Annual surcharge
- None
North Dakota levies no annual surcharge for driving uninsured. The extra money is one-time: $50 for the duplicate license carrying the proof-on-file notation, $50 again to remove that notation, and $50 to reinstate if the license was suspended.
- SR-22 required afterwards
- Yes
A certificate of insurance must be filed with NDDOT and kept there for one year after a § 39-08-20 violation. NDDOT's own SFN 54148 satisfies it; an SR-22 from the carrier also works.
North Dakota sets $150 — higher than 10 of the 35 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $30 to $1,500.
How North Dakota compares with every other state
What it actually costs
A first offense is a flat $150. The flat figure is deceptive, because the fine is rarely the expensive part of driving uninsured in North Dakota.
Add what comes after the fine: $50 to be restored, the figure on the coverage lapse page, and 1 year during which your insurer has to keep a certificate on file with the state, and cannot quietly let the policy drop. Those are the figures that decide what driving uninsured actually costs, and they are the ones left out of the headline penalty almost everywhere.
The part that stops you driving tomorrow is not the fine but the suspension: Not automatic on a first offense — but 12 or more points suspends. The car itself is exposed too — plates impounded on a second offense. 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 North Dakota
What changed
August 1, 2021
Proof of insurance now goes to the prosecutor, not the court clerk
Senate Bill 2056 of the 67th Legislative Assembly changed where a driver clears a no-insurance ticket. Until then N.D.C.C. § 39-08-20(2) told you to take proof that the vehicle was insured at the time to "the office of the court under which the matter will be heard"; the act replaced that with "the prosecutor where the matter is pending". Show it there and you may not be found in violation. It passed the Senate 47-0 and the House 92-0.
Enrolled Senate Bill No. 2056, 67th Legislative Assembly of North DakotaAugust 1, 2015
Driving uninsured stopped being a criminal infraction and became a fixed $150 fee
Senate Bill 2211 of the 64th Legislative Assembly rewrote N.D.C.C. § 39-08-20 and subsection 2 of § 39-06.1-06 together. The sentence in § 39-08-20(4) making a violation "an infraction" carrying a non-suspendable fine of "at least one hundred fifty dollars" was deleted; it does not appear in the current section, which now covers only plate impoundment on a second offense. In its place, subdivision (l) of § 39-06.1-06(2) sets a flat statutory fee of $150 for a first violation and $300 for a second or subsequent violation within three years, payable as a noncriminal disposition. The act also replaced "convicted" with "in violation" throughout the section. The practical effect is that driving uninsured in North Dakota is a noncriminal moving violation with a fixed price, not a criminal charge with a discretionary fine — and the $150 is not a floor that a court can exceed. House Bill 1294 of the 2025 session reopened the same fee schedule and left the $150/$300 figures untouched, so they remain current.
Enrolled Senate Bill No. 2211, 64th Legislative Assembly of North Dakota
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 North Dakota
Checked against the primary sources above on September 30, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.