Virginia Reckless Driving Laws: What Changed and When

Virginia’s reckless driving laws are not where they were five years ago. The speed at which driving becomes a crime on the numbers alone moved up from 80 mph to 85 mph in 2020, and in 2025 the courts were given a way to leave a convicted driver licensed and speed-limited instead of unlicensed. Both changes are in the statutes today and missing from a great deal of the guidance written about them. This page is about what moved, when, and how to tell whether something you are reading describes the law as it now stands.

The speed threshold moved from 80 mph to 85 mph

Va. Code § 46.2-862 now reads that a person is guilty of reckless driving who drives “(i) at a speed of 20 miles per hour or more in excess of the applicable maximum speed limit or (ii) in excess of 85 miles per hour regardless of the applicable maximum speed limit.” The 85 mph figure replaced 80 mph effective July 1, 2020; the amendment shows in the section’s own history line as 2020, chapters 444 and 445. The 20-over trigger was not touched, then or since.

That single number is the most common way to date a piece of Virginia reckless driving writing. A page saying speed alone becomes reckless driving above 80 mph is describing law that was repealed six years ago, and the gap it gets wrong — 81 to 85 mph — is exactly the band most drivers on Virginia’s interstates are in.

The same pair of 2020 acts also reached Va. Code § 46.2-878.3, the prepayment section, which is why driving 81 to 85 mph where the limit is 65 is still a prepayable speeding infraction but carries an extra $100 on top of the per-mile-per-hour amount. The two changes were made together: the criminal line moved up, and the band left underneath it was priced. The thresholds zone by zone set out what that means at each posted limit.

Courts can now order a speed limiter instead of taking a license

The newer change is in the license statute rather than the offense. Subsection C of Va. Code § 46.2-393, which carries a 2025 amendment at the end of its history line, gives a court an alternative it did not have before.

Where a driver is convicted under § 46.2-861 (driving too fast for highway and traffic conditions) or § 46.2-862 (reckless driving by speed), the court may, in its discretion and for good cause shown, require enrollment in the Intelligent Speed Assistance Program — a device that limits the vehicle’s speed — for not less than 60 days nor more than six months, as an alternative to suspending the license.

Above 100 mph it stops being optional. Where a driver is convicted under § 46.2-862 and was found to have been driving in excess of 100 miles per hour, the statute says the court shall order that enrollment for such a period, unless the court has suspended the license under subsection A instead. A very high speed now has two possible license outcomes rather than one, and the court chooses between them.

Two limits sit in the same subsection. Neither a restricted permit nor enrollment in the program lets anyone operate a commercial motor vehicle. And the ordinary range under subsection A — suspension for not less than 60 days nor more than six months for convictions under §§ 46.2-853 through 46.2-864 — is unchanged for everything the alternative does not cover.

This is the freshest moving part in Virginia’s reckless driving law, and the part most guidance has not caught up with.

What else in Virginia’s reckless driving law has moved, and when

The Code of Virginia prints an amendment history at the foot of every section, and reading it is the quickest way to see which parts of this area are live and which have been still for decades.

Section	What it does	Last amended
§ 46.2-852	The general rule — driving so as to endanger life, limb or property	1989; the wording before that dates from 1983
§ 46.2-862	Reckless driving by speed	2020 — the 80 to 85 mph change
§ 46.2-868	The penalty for every offense in the article	2020
§ 46.2-869	Improper driving, the lesser finding	2025
§ 46.2-392	Suspension on a reckless driving conviction generally	2023
§ 46.2-393	Suspension for the speed and specific-act sections	2025 — the speed-limiter alternative
§ 46.2-882	How speed may be proved in court	2020

The 1989 entry appears in the history of every section in the article. That is the recodification that moved these offenses out of the old Title 46.1 and gave them the numbers they carry today, which is why a much older case or article may cite a Title 46.1 number for what is now § 46.2-852.

Two things follow from the table. The parts of the law that decide whether conduct is a crime at all — the general rule and the list of named acts — have been stable for decades. The parts that decide what happens to a convicted driver’s license are where the General Assembly keeps returning. Someone reading older guidance is far more likely to be misled about the consequence than about the offense.

One of those 2020 changes is easy to miss, because it sits in the evidence rules rather than in the offense. Va. Code § 46.2-882 lists the ways a vehicle’s speed may be determined — a laser device, radar, a microcomputer physically connected to an odometer cable, a microcomputer aboard an airplane or helicopter over an interstate — and it now provides that speed may also be determined by a photo speed monitoring device where one is authorized. Whichever method was used, the result is prima facie evidence of the speed, which means it can be contested rather than simply accepted.

The same section caps how long a calibration certificate stays good, and the cap is no longer a single number: no calibration or testing of a device is valid for longer than six months, except for a photo speed monitoring device, where the limit is 12 months. The date on the certificate the officer relies on is worth reading against the date of the stop.

What has not changed

Quite deliberately, the backbone of the offense is where it was.

• It is still a Class 1 misdemeanor. Subsection A of § 46.2-868 makes every reckless driving conviction under the article a Class 1 misdemeanor, and Va. Code § 18.2-11 still sets that at confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both. The 2020 amendment to § 46.2-868 added the mandatory minimum fine of $250 in subsection C, for a driver who committed the offense while violating the state’s handheld phone law; it did not touch the class.
• The general rule still reads the same. Va. Code § 46.2-852 covers driving “recklessly or at a speed or in a manner so as to endanger the life, limb, or property of any person”, irrespective of the maximum speeds permitted by law. It needs no particular speed and no crash, and the full list of what counts as reckless driving runs from that sentence.
• The reduction to improper driving still turns on culpability. Under Va. Code § 46.2-869 a court or jury may find a defendant not guilty of reckless driving but guilty of improper driving where the degree of culpability is slight, and as the section now reads an attorney for the Commonwealth may reduce the charge at any time before the court’s decision and must notify the court. Improper driving remains a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of not more than $500.
• The court still decides the money. Reckless driving is not on the prepayment schedule, so there is nothing to pay in advance and the charge must be answered in court. What that hearing does with a reckless driving fine has not changed with any of the above.

How to tell whether what you are reading is current

Three tells, none of which takes more than a moment.

1. The 80 mph number. A page giving 80 mph as the point at which speed alone becomes reckless driving has not been revisited since June 2020. Treat everything else on it with the same suspicion.
2. No mention of a speed limiter. A page that discusses a conviction above 100 mph only in terms of losing a license was written before the 2025 amendment to § 46.2-393 and is missing the outcome a court is now required to consider.
3. The section’s own history line. Every section on law.lis.virginia.gov prints the years it has been amended. If the last year there is later than the page you are reading, the page is behind — including this one, which is dated for exactly that reason.

Where the current law actually sits

Everything above lives in Article 7 of Chapter 8 of Title 46.2, together with the license statutes in Chapter 3 and the misdemeanor classes in Title 18.2. A section-by-section walk through the statutes covers what each one says and which number is likely to be written on a summons; the overview of reckless driving in Virginia covers the offense as a whole; and the penalties page covers what a conviction carries once the law has been applied to it.

Because these pages describe statutes that move, each one shows the date it was last reviewed, and the official text at law.lis.virginia.gov is the version that governs. Anyone deciding what to do about a charge should read the current section and talk to a Virginia traffic attorney rather than rely on a summary — including this one.