Virginia Moving Violations: Fines, Points and Code Sections

Virginia has no statute that lists its moving violations. What exists is a rule that prices almost all of them, a short list of sections that override it, and a separate DMV schedule that decides the demerit points. The default is Va. Code § 46.2-113: unless a section says otherwise, a violation of the motor vehicle title is a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of not more than that provided for a Class 4 misdemeanor under § 18.2-11 — $250 — with court costs charged separately.

That single sentence answers “how much is this ticket” for most Virginia moving violations. This page sets out the exceptions, the points, and the line where an infraction becomes a crime.

What counts as a moving violation in Virginia

The phrase is administrative rather than statutory. A moving violation is one committed while the vehicle is in motion, and what makes it matter is that the DMV assesses demerit points for the conviction under its own published lists. Equipment, registration and parking matters generally do not carry points.

The Code occasionally settles the question itself. Section 33.2-501 says an HOV-lane offense “shall not be a moving violation” in so many words, even though it is committed by a moving car — and that label is the reason an HOV ticket normally carries no points while the conviction is still reported to the DMV.

How Virginia prices a moving violation

Open § 46.2-816 or § 46.2-830 looking for a dollar figure and there is none. That is deliberate: the General Assembly wrote one ceiling for the whole title and named a figure only where it wanted a different result.

Offense	Section	Maximum fine
Following too closely	§ 46.2-816	Up to $250 (§ 46.2-113 default)
Stop sign or Yield sign	§ 46.2-821	Up to $250 (§ 46.2-113 default)
Failure to obey a traffic sign or device	§ 46.2-830	Up to $250 (§ 46.2-113 default)
Improper passing	§ 46.2-838	Up to $250 (§ 46.2-113 default)
Failure to yield, uncontrolled intersection	§ 46.2-820	Up to $250 (§ 46.2-113 default)
Traffic light violation	§ 46.2-833	Up to $350 — stated in the section
Failure to maintain lane	§ 46.2-804	$100 — a fixed figure in the section
Holding a handheld phone	§ 46.2-818.2	$125 first, $250 second; $250 mandatory in a work zone
HOV lane	§ 33.2-501	$100, or $125–$1,000 in Planning District 8
Improper driving	§ 46.2-869	Up to $500
Adult seat belt	§ 46.2-1094	$25 civil penalty, secondary offense
Red-light camera notice	§ 15.2-968.1	$50 ceiling, no court costs

Only four rows carry a number the General Assembly wrote into the offense section itself, and they are the four worth checking before assuming the $250 ceiling: the fixed $125 for holding a phone, the flat $100 for failure to maintain lane, the $350 signal ceiling, and the HOV schedule. Everything else — tailgating, a stop sign or a traffic sign, passing without two feet of clearance — runs into § 46.2-113 and stops at $250.

Speeding is priced differently again: prepayable speeding fines follow the Uniform Fine Schedule set by the Supreme Court of Virginia, which charges by the mile per hour over the limit rather than by a single ceiling. Virginia’s courts publish how traffic fines and payments work for the cases that run through a general district court.

In every row above, court costs are separate and additional, and they are fixed by statute rather than by the offense section. Va. Code § 16.1-69.48:1 D assesses $51 in a traffic infraction tried in district court; subsection B assesses $61 in a district court misdemeanor, which is what reckless driving, DUI and driving while suspended carry. So the real figure for a $100 lane ticket is $151, and for a $250 following-too-closely conviction, $301.

Demerit points, offense by offense

Points are assessed by the DMV, not imposed by the judge, and the number has no relationship to the fine. A $100 lane ticket and a $125 phone ticket land differently on the record.

Violation	Points	Years on the record
Reckless driving, Article 7 generally	6	11
Driving while intoxicated	6	11
Driving on a suspended or revoked license	6	11
Speeding 20 mph or more over the limit	6	5
Reckless driving — failing to stop before entering a highway (§ 46.2-863)	4	11
Speeding 10–19 mph over the limit	4	5
Aggressive driving	4	5
Following too closely	4	3
Failure to yield right-of-way	4	3
Failure to obey a traffic signal	4	3
Passing a stopped school bus, non-reckless	4	3
Speeding 1–9 mph over the limit	3	5
Failure to obey a highway sign	3	3
Holding a handheld communications device	3	3
Improper driving (§ 46.2-869)	3	3

The pattern worth noticing is the third column. Two convictions can carry the same points and sit on the record for very different lengths of time: a reckless driving conviction for failing to stop before entering a highway stays on the record for eleven years, while a following too closely conviction with the same four points stays for three.

Read the table for what is not in it, as well. The DMV publishes its assessments by offense name rather than by Code section, and there is no row headed for a stop sign, for failure to maintain lane or for improper passing — so the point value on a § 46.2-821 stop sign summons depends on how the DMV classifies the conviction reported to it, and should be read off the DMV’s own lists rather than inferred from a section number.

Where a moving violation stops being a ticket

Virginia classifies criminal offenses into six felony classes and four misdemeanor classes under § 18.2-9, and puts traffic infractions outside both — § 18.2-8 calls them violations of public order not deemed to be criminal in nature. There is no Class A, B or C misdemeanor in the Code of Virginia; those are other states’ labels.

Three crossings from one category to the other come up constantly:

• Reckless driving. Any offense in Article 7 of Chapter 8 is a Class 1 misdemeanor — up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. Reckless driving by speed is 20 mph or more over the limit, or over 85 mph regardless of the limit.
• Failure to yield that becomes reckless. Under Va. Code § 46.2-863, failing to stop before entering a highway from a side road with traffic approaching within 500 feet — or failing to yield where a Yield sign is posted — is reckless driving, not an infraction. The two failure-to-yield regimes are the clearest example of the same words meaning two different charges.
• Improper driving as the way back. Where a person is charged with reckless driving and the degree of culpability is slight, Va. Code § 46.2-869 lets the court find him guilty of improper driving instead — a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of not more than $500 — and lets the Commonwealth’s attorney reduce the charge before the court decides.

What reaches your record, and what does not

Not everything that arrives in an envelope is a conviction.

• A red-light camera notice under § 15.2-968.1 is not a conviction as an operator, is not made part of the operating record, and may not be used for insurance purposes. The penalty may not exceed $50 and may not include court costs. A mailed camera notice and an officer’s summons are genuinely different instruments.
• An adult seat belt violation under § 46.2-1094 is a $25 civil penalty, is not negligence, is inadmissible in a civil damages action, and no officer may stop a vehicle for it — a secondary offense. The rules for passengers under 18 are a separate regime and do not work the same way.
• An HOV conviction is reported to the DMV and becomes part of the driving record, but carries no demerit points except on repeats within five years of a first offense in Planning District 8.

Everything else on this page is a conviction the court reports, the DMV records, and an insurer can see.

A first moving violation in Virginia

There is no statutory first-offense discount on an infraction. What a first offense does change is the practical range: a court working below a $250 ceiling has room to move, and on a first violation of the handheld phone law a court may order the satisfactory completion of a driver improvement clinic in lieu of a conviction — which leaves no conviction and therefore no points. That route exists in § 46.2-818.2 and nowhere else in this table.

Prepaying any of these is a conviction. It pays the fine and costs, closes the case, and sends the points to the DMV. Whether that is the right trade depends on what is already on the record, which is the one thing a fine schedule cannot tell you.