Alcohol and substances — legal limits
| Who | Limit (per mille, blood) | For how long | Consequence | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experienced driver of a motor vehicle | 0.5 | From the moment the novice period ends, permanently. | A criminal offence, not a ticket like bad parking. Art. 176(2): up to one year of imprisonment or a fourth-category fine. On top of that the licence can be seized and the CBR can impose an assessment or an educational measure. | In the breath test the same limit is 220 micrograms per litre of exhaled air. Paragraph 2 speaks of "a vehicle", so it covers every vehicle, and also anyone acting as an accompanying coach. |
| Novice driver of a motor vehicle | 0.2 | Three alternative grounds, art. 8(3): seven years if your first licence was AM or T and you were not yet eighteen; five years if your first licence was issued when you were already eighteen; and five years from your first B licence if you were under eighteen at that issue. The text says "if", so one ground suffices — in practice the status runs until the latest of those dates. | The same penal provision as above, but the consequences weigh more heavily: a novice licence can be declared invalid, after which you must take the exams again. The CBR also imposes a fitness-to-drive assessment more readily. | In the breath test, 88 micrograms per litre. Paragraph 3 applies only to a MOTOR VEHICLE for which a licence is required — that wording is decisive, see the row on cyclists. Paragraph 4 extends the limit to anyone driving without ever having been issued a licence: 0.2 there too. |
| Rider of a moped | 0.2 while you are a novice, 0.5 afterwards | This is where the seven-year rule bites hardest. Someone who obtains the AM licence at sixteen falls under 0.2 until twenty-three — even if by then he has been driving a car for years. | The same as for a car: art. 8 is one article for all motor vehicles. That a moped is small and slow changes nothing about the sentencing range of art. 176. | A moped is a motor vehicle for which a licence (AM) is required, and therefore it does fall under paragraph 3. Precisely that difference separates it from the bicycle in the row below. |
| Cyclist | 0.5 | Always 0.5. The novice rule does not touch the cyclist, no matter how long you have held your licence. | Art. 8 makes no exception for the bicycle, so the penal provision of art. 176 applies here too. Refusing to blow is a separate offence: art. 163(2), listed in art. 176(5). | Two surprises at once. Yes, cycling under the influence is punishable: paragraph 2 forbids driving "a vehicle", and a bicycle is a vehicle. And no, the stricter 0.2 does not apply, because paragraph 3 explicitly names a motor vehicle. A novice driver on a bicycle is therefore on 0.5, not 0.2. |
Notes
- This limit is a threshold of criminal liability, not of safety. The law says from which level you are punishable; it does not say that below it you drive well. Driving ability declines well before any limit comes into view, and paragraph 1 of art. 8 forbids driving under the influence without any figure being involved at all. This table is an overview of the law, not guidance about drinking.
- Paragraph 1 is about far more than drink. It forbids driving under the influence of any substance you know or ought to know reduces driving ability — drugs, but medicines just as much. For a number of designated substances, paragraph 5 lays down hard threshold values, and combinations with alcohol carry lower values than each substance separately.
- The accompanying coach is covered too. Art. 8 forbids not only driving yourself but also "acting as an accompanying person". The coach beside a seventeen-year-old under 2toDrive therefore breaches the article just as squarely as the driver does.
- Refusing is no way out. Anyone ordered to cooperate with a breath test is obliged to blow (art. 163(2)). The refusal is itself a punishable offence, independent of how much you had drunk.
- Amounts are deliberately absent here. Art. 176 names a fourth-category fine; what that category is in euros is set out in art. 23 of the Criminal Code and is periodically indexed. Current amounts belong in the fines table, which is maintained separately from the code.
- Mind the shelf life of this article. On wetten.overheid.nl, arts. 8 and 176 carry a notice that amendments have been adopted whose date of entry into force is not yet fixed. This table gives the text as it stood on the verification date and must be checked against the source again before those amendments take effect.
The law itself
WVW1994 art. 8 lid 2WVW1994 art. 8 lid 3WVW1994 art. 8 lid 1WVW1994 art. 8 lid 4WVW1994 art. 163 lid 1WVW1994 art. 176 lid 2
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