Criminal Exposure After a DUI Crash With No Other Details

Attorney Answer

On what you have told us, no one can responsibly say what you are facing — because one fact decides most of it: whether anyone other than you was injured.

The base offense is Cal. Veh. Code § 23152: subdivision (a) makes it unlawful to drive under the influence of any alcoholic beverage, and subdivision (b) makes it unlawful to drive with 0.08 percent or more alcohol by weight in the blood. A collision by itself does not change which statute applies.

What changes it is injury to someone else. Cal. Veh. Code § 23153 elevates the offense where an impaired driver proximately causes bodily injury to a person other than the driver. And Cal. Veh. Code § 23558 adds a further enhancement — one additional year in state prison for each additional injured victim, up to three years — but only on a felony conviction under § 23153 or the related Penal Code homicide provisions, and only where the additional injuries are charged in the accusatory pleading and found true. Nothing you have described establishes that anyone else was hurt, so on this record neither § 23153 nor § 23558 is in play. If someone else was injured, the analysis changes completely.

One more thing, and it is the most urgent. "I was driving drunk and got in an accident" is an admission. The prosecution has to prove both driving and impairment, and statements are the easiest way for that proof to arrive. Stop repeating that sentence.

What you can do

1. Stop describing the crash — to officers, to witnesses, to friends, in texts, and on social media. Write your account down once, privately, dated, for your lawyer. 2. If a breath or blood test was taken, request the DMV hearing immediately. It is a separate track and a shorter clock than the criminal case. 3. Find out, through counsel, whether anyone other than you was injured, and how seriously. That determines whether § 23153 and § 23558 enter the case at all. 4. Get medical attention now and keep the records. Delay in treatment gets used against injured people later. 5. Get the collision report number and request the report; preserve the vehicle and photographs of the scene and the damage. 6. Give your insurer the notice your policy requires, but keep it factual and do not characterize fault or your own condition. 7. Get a lawyer before your first court date, and take the discovery request seriously — the blood or breath testing records are the heart of the case.

⏱ Time limits apply. If a chemical test was administered, the window to request a DMV administrative hearing runs from the date of arrest — roughly ten days — and is printed on the notice you were given. That licence case runs separately from the criminal case, on a different standard of proof, and the two can reach opposite results on the same crash. Winning one does not dispose of the other. The exact date depends on your arrest.