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An OWI arrest starts two cases. If you refused the test, you have 14 days to request the license hearing.
Most people go through this once, without a map. The numbers below are the official count, not our estimate. The rest of this guide is the map.
Source: Michigan Vehicle Code, MCL 257.625 and 257.625f, and the Michigan courts' criminal sentencing chart.
Each phase protects the one after it. Get medical care fast, open the claim on time, build the record, then settle from strength.
You leave with a citation, a court date, and if you refused the test, a notice. Keep all three together. Write down what you remember: where you were stopped, what the officer said, which tests you did, and what time the breath or blood test happened. Do not post about it. Do not call the officer or the court to explain.
If you refused the chemical test, the 14-day clock started on the date of the notice, not your court date. The request goes to the Secretary of State under MCL 257.625f(1). If it does not go in, the suspension lands automatically. This is the shortest clock in the case and the one people miss.
Do not put it in an email. Pick up the phone. Have the citation, the notice, and the date of the stop in front of you. The first job is the closest deadline. The second is telling you what you are facing. Criminal fees are quoted in writing before you decide.
The charge is read and conditions of release are set. Then the file comes: the police report, dash and body camera footage, the test records, and the calibration history on the instrument. Most OWI cases are decided by what is in that file.
Was the stop lawful. Was the test done correctly. Does the evidence come in at all. The motions here decide whether the case ends by plea, dismissal, or trial, and what a plea looks like if there is one.
Every injury claim in Michigan runs on clocks that start the day you are hurt. The forms are simple and the deadlines are unforgiving.
Time from the crash to each cutoff. Every case has facts that can shift these, which is exactly what a free first look confirms.
No formula survives contact with a real case, but the drivers are knowable. Economic damages are receipts and math. Pain and suffering is argued, not calculated, and multiplier rules of thumb are internet folklore.
Reported contributing factors, statewide. The other driver's behavior is often the heart of the fault argument.
Source: Michigan State Police 2024 year-end crash data.
OWI. Michigan calls it operating while intoxicated, MCL 257.625. DUI and DWI mean the same thing in conversation. The lesser charge, OWVI, is operating while visibly impaired and does not require a 0.08 reading.
0.08. MCL 257.625(1)(b). At 0.17 or above you are charged under the high BAC provision, MCL 257.625(1)(c), a separate and more serious offense. Drivers under 21 face a 0.02 threshold. MCL 257.625(6).
The high BAC offense at MCL 257.625(1)(c), charged at 0.17 or above. A first offense carries up to 180 days in jail instead of 93, a fine of $200 to $700, a one-year license suspension with no driving for the first 45 days, and an ignition interlock on any restricted license.
A misdemeanor with up to 93 days in jail, a fine of $100 to $500, up to 360 hours of community service, a 30-day license suspension followed by 150 days restricted, and six points. MCL 257.625(9)(a). Jail is uncommon on a first offense, but the conviction stays on your record.
14 days from the date of the notice. MCL 257.625f(1). The clock starts at the notice, not at your arraignment. If the request does not go in, the Secretary of State imposes the suspension without a hearing.
Your license is suspended for one year, or two years if this is a second refusal within seven years. MCL 257.625f(1)(a). No court rules on it and no finding of guilt is required.
There are two tests. Refusing the roadside preliminary breath test is a civil infraction with a fine. MCL 257.625a(2)(d). Refusing the chemical test at the station after a lawful arrest triggers the implied consent suspension, one year for a first refusal. Refusing does not stop the case. Police can get a warrant for a blood draw. A blood test needs that warrant unless you consent or there is a true emergency.
For a standard first OWI, the license is suspended for 30 days and then restricted for 150, so you can usually drive to work, school, and court after the first month. For a high BAC first offense, the suspension is a year, with no driving for the first 45 days and an interlock after that.
The district court for the city or township where the stop happened. For most Metro Detroit stops that is an Oakland County district court. The court is set by where the offense occurred, not by where you live.
Two cases are running against you and only one sends you a court date. The 14-day license window closes whether or not anyone tells you about it, and a first offense still produces a record and a license consequence. The first call is about the closest deadline.
A first OWI conviction can be set aside under Michigan's expungement law after five years, once, if you have no later OWI, and only by applying to the court. MCL 780.621e. It stays on your Secretary of State driving record regardless. A second OWI cannot be set aside.
Five decisions set the rules a Michigan OWI case turns on: when a stop becomes a seizure, where you can be charged, what counts as operating, and what a test refusal can cost. Newest first. We update this section if a new ruling changes it.
October 15, 2026
Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 26, 2022, Docket No. 162833
A Tuscola County deputy saw two cars stopped in the road on a January morning, windows down, the drivers talking. No other traffic was around. He followed one driver down a one-lane driveway and parked a few feet behind him, blocking the only way out. No lights, no siren. He smelled marijuana and alcohol, the driver admitted to both, and the arrest followed.
The Supreme Court held the driver was seized the moment the patrol car blocked the driveway, because a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave. It also held the impeding-traffic statute, MCL 257.676b(1), is only violated when actual traffic is disrupted, and there was no traffic. The deputy's reading of the statute was not a reasonable mistake of law. The stop was unlawful, and the evidence stayed out.
Every OWI defense starts with the stop. If the officer had no lawful reason to stop you, what came after does not come in.
Michigan Supreme Court, decided 2017, 500 Mich 422
A man backed his car out of his garage into his own driveway, to a point in line with his house, then pulled it back in. The trial court dismissed the OWI charge because a private driveway is not a place "generally accessible to motor vehicles" under MCL 257.625(1).
The Supreme Court reversed. The statute covers a highway, a place open to the public, or a place generally accessible to motor vehicles. A residential driveway is generally accessible to motor vehicles, so the charge stood.
Moving a car a few feet in your own driveway while intoxicated can be charged.
United States Supreme Court, decided June 23, 2016, 579 US 438
Three drivers in two states were prosecuted for refusing chemical tests. The Court split the two kinds of test. A breath test after a lawful drunk driving arrest is a search incident to arrest and needs no warrant. A blood test is more intrusive and does need a warrant, unless you consent or there is a true emergency.
A state may not make it a crime to refuse a warrantless blood test. Civil consequences for refusing, like a license suspension, are allowed. That is the model Michigan uses.
Refuse the breath test in Michigan and you lose the license. The refusal itself is not a crime.
Michigan Court of Appeals, decided September 26, 2002, 252 Mich App 130; 651 NW2d 143
A greenskeeper found a pickup at 1:30 in the morning, engine running, lights off, parked beside a cart barn in a Leelanau County golf course lot. The man asleep behind the wheel had eight beers in him and blew 0.17. He said he had driven across the lot earlier and parked.
The Court of Appeals vacated the conviction. Under the Wood definition, a person operates a vehicle only while it is in motion or in a position posing a significant risk of a collision. The truck was in park or neutral with nothing but the gearshift holding it still, and the chance of it slipping into gear while he slept was not a significant risk. He was not operating the truck.
Michigan Supreme Court, decided 1995, 450 Mich 399; 538 NW2d 351
A man was found unconscious in a car at a fast food drive-thru, engine running, in gear, his foot on the brake. The Supreme Court used the case to replace its older rule that a person sleeping in a motionless car cannot be operating it.
The new definition: once a person has put a vehicle in motion, or in a position posing a significant risk of a collision, that person continues to operate it until it is returned to a position posing no such risk. A car in drive, held still only by a sleeping driver's foot, poses that risk. He was operating it.
Wood and Burton together answer the holiday season question, whether you can sleep it off in the car. A car in park with the engine running for heat is a different case from a car in drive with your foot on the brake.
These decisions describe how courts read the statute in the cases in front of them. They do not tell you how your own case will come out, because your facts control that. If you are holding a citation and a notice and are not sure which deadline comes first, call Azzo Law at 844-ASK-AZZO (844-275-2996). A real person picks up, and we start with the closest deadline.
Lauren Sitto Azzo, lead attorney at Azzo Law, PLLC, is responsible for the content of this page. This section is general information about Michigan and federal court decisions and not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
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