Does every accident involving injuries result in DUI with injury charges?
Answer:
Whether a DUI accident results in felony charges depends on whether the injuries sustained are considered serious enough under Georgia law. If you’ve been charged in this kind of situation, give us a call and let us help.
No, It Depends on the Severity of the Injury
Not every accident that happens during a DUI stop turns into a felony case. Georgia draws a real line between a misdemeanor DUI and the much more serious felony charge of serious injury by vehicle, and that line is defined by how badly someone was actually hurt — not just that an injury occurred at all.
What Georgia Law Actually Requires for a Felony Charge
Under O.C.G.A. § 40-6-394, serious injury by vehicle requires “bodily harm” that deprives someone of a body member, renders a body member useless, seriously disfigures the body or a member of it, or causes organic brain damage that renders the body or a member of it useless. That’s a meaningfully higher bar than an ordinary injury — the statute is written to capture genuinely serious harm, not every scrape or bruise from a collision.
The Injury Doesn’t Have to Be Permanent
That said, “serious” doesn’t necessarily mean permanent. Georgia courts have found that a serious temporary injury can satisfy the statute just as much as a permanent one — the injury doesn’t have to leave someone permanently disabled to qualify, only seriously harmed at the time.
A Real Example of What Counts
In Bray v. State, 330 Ga. App. 768 (2015), Georgia courts found that multiple rib fractures and bruising to one victim, along with a dislocated finger and head laceration to another, rose to the level of serious disfigurement under the statute. That gives a concrete sense of where courts have actually drawn the line in practice.
What Happens When Injuries Don’t Rise to That Level
When the injuries from a DUI accident don’t meet that bar, the case generally stays a misdemeanor DUI rather than escalating to the felony serious injury by vehicle charge. Other traffic offenses connected to the accident, like failure to maintain lane or following too closely, can still be charged separately, but the felony injury enhancement itself depends entirely on how the injuries measure up against the statute’s specific definition.
What to Do Next
If you’ve been charged in this kind of situation, give us a call and let us help.
