Recent Changes to Michigan Drunk-Driving Law: A Dated Timeline

Michigan's drunk-driving law has changed often in the last two decades. The biggest changes for drivers are the 2007 lifetime lookback for felony OWI, the 0.17 high-BAC offense in 2010, the end of driver responsibility fees in 2018, the end of the 0.08 "sunset" date in 2021, and the first-offense OWI set-aside in 2022.^{[1][2][8][4][5]} The timeline below lists each change with its effective date, as of October 2026. The Secretary of State applies the law in effect when the offense was committed, so the date of the offense can matter.^[9]

Timeline of changes, 1990–2027

Date	Change
1990	U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Michigan State Police sobriety checkpoint program under the Fourth Amendment (Michigan Dep't of State Police v Sitz).[10]
1993	Michigan Supreme Court holds sobriety checkpoints violate the Michigan Constitution (Sitz v Dep't of State Police).[11]
January 3, 2007	Heidi's Law (2006 PA 564): a third OWI is a felony regardless of how long ago the priors were.[1]
October 31, 2010	The 0.17 high-BAC ("super drunk") offense takes effect (2008 PA 462).[2]
October 31, 2010	Vehicle immobilization of 1 to 3 years applies after 2 or more prior convictions, with no time window.[12]
2011	Last amendment to the Secretary of State's driver license restoration rules (R 257.301–257.316).[13]
March 31, 2013	"Other intoxicating substance" added to the OWI statute (2012 PA 543).[14]
May 9, 2013	2013 PA 23 moves the scheduled 0.08-to-0.10 rollback from October 1, 2013 to October 1, 2018.[15]
January 12, 2015	Statutory definition of the roadside "preliminary chemical breath analysis" takes effect (2014 PA 315).[16]
September 22, 2016	Statutes define standardized field sobriety tests by NHTSA standards and allow qualified witnesses to testify about them.[17][18]
September 22, 2016	Statute authorizes a roadside oral-fluid (saliva) drug-testing pilot run by certified drug recognition experts.[19][20]
Nov 2017 – Nov 2018	Phase I of the oral-fluid pilot in five counties.[21]
January 1, 2018	A first minor-in-possession violation becomes a civil infraction (2016 PA 357).[22]
October 1, 2018	No new driver responsibility fees assessed; unpaid balances no longer collected after September 30, 2018.[8]
December 6, 2018	Recreational marijuana law (MRTMA) takes effect; it does not authorize driving under the influence of marijuana.[23]
December 18, 2018	Canada's tougher impaired-driving penalties take effect, affecting admissibility to Canada.[24]
March 28, 2019	Michigan's Driver's License Compact act (2018 PA 621) takes effect.[25]
Oct 2019 – Sept 2020	Phase II of the oral-fluid pilot, 69 counties.[26]
January–April 2020	DataMaster service-record investigation: after discovering a problem with its contractor's service records, the State Police temporarily remove all instruments from service and open an investigation; State Police staff handle maintenance from January 10, and the contractor's contract is terminated effective April 9, 2020.[27]
July 2, 2020	Required auto bodily-injury liability limits rise to $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident for policies after July 1, 2020, subject to exceptions in the statute.[28]
February 2021	OWI jury instructions (M Crim JI chapter 15) rewritten and renumbered.[29]
March 24, 2021	Repeat-offense jail may be suspended if the defendant completes a specialty court program (2020 PA 383).[30]
March 24, 2021	Presumption of a non-jail sentence for ordinary misdemeanors (2020 PA 395); OWI involving a crash that damages another person's property or injures or kills another person is a "serious misdemeanor" outside it.[31][32]
April 1, 2021	General probation limits become 2 years for misdemeanors and 3 years for felonies, with felony probation extendable up to twice by 1 year each on specific findings (2020 PA 397).[33]
April 11, 2021	New set-aside law (2020 PA 187) takes effect with a flat bar on setting aside any OWI.[34]
September 24, 2021	2021 PA 85 removes the fixed 0.08-to-0.10 rollback date.[4][35]
October 1, 2021	Clean Slate to Drive (2020 PA 376): fewer failure-to-appear and failure-to-pay suspensions; licenses suspended for reasons no longer allowed are reinstated without a fee.[36][37]
October 1, 2021	Automatic license suspension for drug convictions (old MCL 257.319e) repealed.[38]
October 1, 2021	No licensing action for a second or later minor-in-possession violation.[39]
February 19, 2022	One first-offense OWI per lifetime may be set aside on application (2021 PA 78 and 79).[5][40][6]
March 9, 2022	2021 PA 82 sets the 5-year wait for a first-OWI set-aside application.[41]
2022	People v Lucynski: misreading an unambiguous statute is not a reasonable mistake of law that can justify a stop.[42]
May 22, 2023	State Police breath-alcohol rules rewritten; "department" now means the State Police.[43]
2023	State Police validate the Intoxilyzer 9000 before adopting it as the evidential breath instrument.[44]
August 12, 2023	Crime victim compensation filing deadline is 5 years after the crime (2022 PA 78).[45]
September 19, 2023	The "DWI/sobriety court interlock program" becomes the "specialty court interlock program," open to more specialty courts (2023 PA 124 and 125).[46]
2024	People v Duff: partly blocking a parked car, with spotlights and flanking officers, can be a seizure.[47]
2024	Lucynski III: the exclusionary rule applies to evidence from the unlawful driveway seizure.[48]
2024	City of Auburn Hills v Mason (Court of Appeals): a court departing from the non-jail misdemeanor presumption must explain why.[49]
September 2026	Reckless driving jury instruction amended.[50]
December 31, 2026	Scheduled end of the general court-cost authority in MCL 769.1k(1)(b)(iii) unless extended.[51]
October 1, 2027	New presumption of financial hardship for appointed counsel for people serving a sentence or in residential treatment (2026 PA 70).[52]

The 0.08 "sunset," explained

A common claim is that Michigan's "super drunk" law or its 0.08 limit "expires." The 0.17 high-BAC offense has no sunset in current law.^[3] What had a sunset was the 0.08 limit: the 2008 act said 0.10 would apply beginning October 1, 2013.^[53] 2013 PA 23 moved that date to October 1, 2018.^[15] 2017 PA 153 moved it again, to October 1, 2021.^[53] 2021 PA 85, effective September 24, 2021, replaced the date with a condition: 0.10 would apply only beginning 5 years after the State Treasurer certifies that Michigan no longer receives federal highway funding conditioned on a national blood alcohol limit.^[4] See Michigan's blood alcohol limits and the high BAC law.

Set-asides: three dates to keep straight

1. April 11, 2021. The new set-aside law (2020 PA 187) barred setting aside any OWI conviction.^[34]
2. February 19, 2022. 2021 PA 78 and 79, both effective that day, created the exception for one first-violation OWI per lifetime.^[5][6]
3. March 9, 2022. 2021 PA 82 set the 5-year waiting period.^[41]

Second and later OWIs, commercial-vehicle alcohol violations under MCL 257.625m and traffic offenses causing injury or death remain ineligible, and no OWI is set aside automatically.^[54][55][56] Details are in setting aside an OWI conviction and who is eligible.

Changes that affect older sources

• Driver responsibility fees. The SFA identifies the repeal as PAs 43 through 50 of 2018, not "PA 46–51."^[8] See driver responsibility fees: repealed.
• Jury instruction numbers. Since February 2021, M Crim JI 15.1 is high-BAC OWI and 15.2 is OWI; the refusal instruction is 15.8, formerly 15.9.^[29][57]
• Breath machines. Older cases describe the DataMaster; the current instrument is the Intoxilyzer 9000.^[27][44] See the station breath test.
• Felony lookback. The pre-2007 10-year window for a felony third offense no longer applies to offenses after January 3, 2007.^[1] The commercial 0.04 felony still uses a 10-year lookback.^[58] See third-offense OWI.

Common misstatements built on outdated rules are collected in myths about Michigan OWI law, and the terms used here are defined in the glossary.