How to look up AR driving record

How to look up AR driving record

Hi, I'm Charlie Roadman, Austin criminal defense attorney, and today I want to talk about getting your AR driving record from DPS for Texas. Now, first question is why would you need an AR driving record? And the answer is that you need an AR driving record to get an occupational license. So because of my line of work, we're getting a lot of occupational licenses for our clients. And so this is one of the things they need to provide to us because the judge will review the whole packet. And if they don't have the AR driving record in it, the judge will deny the occupational license. So it's part of the packet that we turn into a judge.

So first thing is you can get this online, but when you Google Texas DPS driving record, the first two things you're going to get are ads for companies that will sell you this. Okay? And these are private companies that just go get the abstract AR driving record from DPS, and then sell it to you for a little extra money. So you don't need to do that. You can go right to DPS. And if you'll see down here that this is the official DPS website, it's dps.texas.gov, not these other two up top.

So for example, this website right here is not DPS, okay. Even though it says DPS records, this is a private company, and you can sort of tell it's not DPS because the website looks modern and new and clean. So this one is actually DPS. So it looks like a website made in 1990. All right. So here's we go, how to order a driving record. This is the first page, and it'll tell you that you need a certain type of browser and you sort of confirm all that.

And then you're going to click this box right here that actually almost looks like an ad, but that's where it says order now, okay, so you're driving record. And that's going to take you to this sort of welcome page, and all you really do with this page is hit continue. And then we get to the checklist. And again, they're going to say you have to have Firefox or Chrome or Safari or Explorer. This says Microsoft Edge is not supported, okay.

Now they'll let you print a test record here to just make sure your browser works. And then once you've done that, you acknowledge that you have what you need and you hit continue. Now you're going to put in your driver's license number, date of birth, last four of your social, and then an audit number. And the audit number you may not know which you can click right here. I don't know my audit number.

Now, if you have your driver's license, it's this bottom really long digit number. I think 16 digits, something like that. But if you don't know your audit number because you don't have your driver's license, it'll give you some security questions to try out to confirm who you are. So it'll be four or five questions. And this is one of my questions is during 1984, what state did I live in? And the answer was Nevada. And I really know that because I went to see Van Halen on their tour for the 1984 album. So that helped me remember that. There are some other questions that were tricky. I wasn't even sure I was getting right about streets near my street and other places I lived, the kind of stuff you're like, how do they know all this? Texas, know? But anyway, they confirmed me eventually.

And so it said, okay, you want your driving record. What type? And you can see these type 1, 2, 2a, 3, 3a, type AR. And this is the one we want for an occupational license. So you just check that and fill out your information. And then it costs $22, okay. So you pay them with your credit card and then they'll say, okay, now you can print it right on your browser. And it says the password is your driver's license number, okay? So that's one way you can get it or they'll email it to you.

So this is what it looks like when they say, okay, we can print it now, and then you type in your driver's license number for the password, and then it'll show up and you can print it. If you email it, they'll just send you an email that looks just with your driver record PDF on it. And this is what, for example, mine looks like. And this is what you would give to your attorney or to us, and just forward that to us in an email. So I hope this helps. That's how you get a Texas DPS AR driving record.