Calculator
Alcohol and ‰
The established reading decides whether this is an administrative offence or a crime. The calculator places it, escalates on earlier entries, and applies the zero-alcohol rule for new drivers.
Your entries
Result
- 500 €Amount
- 2Points
- 1 mo.Driving ban
Result
- 500 €Amount
- 2Points
- 1 mo.Driving ban
What this means
- Standard rate from the fine catalogue (Bußgeldkatalog): 500 €.
- This offence carries 2 points in the German driver register (Fahreignungsregister, "Flensburg").
- Standard driving ban (Regelfahrverbot): 1 month.
Key figures
Where the limits actually sit
The administrative offence begins at 0,5 ‰ in blood, or the equivalent 0,25 mg/l in breath. What counts is the officially established reading. A self-estimate, a pocket breathalyser or a count of drinks is not evidence, and this tool deliberately offers no way to work backwards from what you drank — it places a reading that already exists.
Cannabis has a threshold of its own rather than riding the general drug rules: 3,5 ng/ml of THC in blood serum is the first-class threshold. The eight intoxicants listed in the annex to § 24a(2) work differently again — for those, detection in serum is the offence, with no threshold to be over, and THC is not among them.
Above the administrative range the matter stops being a fine at all. It becomes a criminal case, handled by a court under a different instrument, and this calculator says so instead of producing an amount.
Background
Escalation follows your register, not your reading
This is the part that catches people out. Within the administrative range the amount does not rise with the reading. It rises with the decisions already recorded against you.
For alcohol over the limit the catalogue provides 500 € on a first decision, 1.000 € where one is already recorded, and 1.500 € beyond that. The standard driving ban moves with it, from 1 month to 3 months. Every tier carries 2 points. The cannabis and listed-drug families follow the same shape; alcohol combined with cannabis starts higher, at 1.000 €. In total the reviewed data set carries 5 impairment families, and the alcohol and drugs table on this site renders all of them.
So two people with the same reading can be given very different amounts, and the difference is not discretion — it is history.
Details
New drivers: a flat amount, and no second tier
During the probationary period, and for anyone under twenty-one, a separate prohibition applies: no alcohol at all, and no cannabis. There is no threshold to be under. The catalogue provides a single amount, 250 €, with 1 point.
There is no second and no further tier for it, and that absence is deliberate rather than missing data.
What does not exist
The zero-alcohol rule for new drivers has no repeat escalation
§ 24c StVG · BKatV Annex (row 243b)
Overview
The criminal tier, and why no figure appears there
Above the administrative range the act is prosecuted as a criminal offence, and the penalty is a fine in daily units: the court sets how many units, and separately what one unit is worth, from net income, case by case. The statutory frame runs from 5 to 360 units. No calculator can produce that figure, because the inputs are your finances and a judge, so this one does not try. It explains the frame and stops.
Interpretation, not statutory wording
The absolute-unfitness threshold is case law, not statutory text
BGH, 28.06.1990 — 4 StR 297/90 (BGHSt 37, 89), case law · § 316, § 315c StGB
Process
A separate procedure that is easy to miss
Above certain readings, and on repeated offences, the licensing authority can require a medical-psychological assessment before a licence is returned. It is not part of the fine, it is not ordered by the fine notice, and it has its own legal basis in § 13 of the driving-licence ordinance (FeV). This site names the procedure and its provision, and does not state the reading at which it becomes likely, because that figure is not in the reviewed data set.
Prescribed medication has its own carve-out in the statute where the substance was taken for a specific illness as directed. That is a legal question about your case, which is exactly the kind of question this site does not answer.
Next step
Alcohol and drugs
Escalation follows the entries already on the register, not the reading that was measured. The zero-alcohol rule for new drivers has a row of its own.
Related offences
Alcohol and drugs
Escalation follows the entries already on the register, not the reading that was measured. The zero-alcohol rule for new drivers has a row of its own.
Speeding
The bands of the speeding table for cars, split by inside and outside built-up areas. A motorway counts as outside — there is no separate motorway table.
Red lights
What matters is how long the light had already been red, and whether anyone was endangered or anything damaged. Bicycles and pedestrians have rows of their own.
FAQ