Interlock Devices in Queensland — What Happens Before You Get Your Licence Back
Drink Driving — 2026-08-21 — by Sacha Sarah Smith, Civic Law
Blow 0.100 or more and the end of your disqualification is not the end of it. The only licence you can get has a breath tester wired into your car for at least twelve months, at around $2,600 of your own money. Here is who it applies to, what it costs, and how a work licence changes the timing.
An interlock is a breath tester wired into the ignition of a car. The engine will not start until someone blows into it, and it asks for another sample part way through the trip. Any alcohol at all and the car does not go. It photographs whoever blows into it and sends that to Transport and Main Roads.
If you are convicted of the wrong drink driving charge, you do not simply serve your disqualification and get your licence back. When the disqualification ends, the only licence available to you is one with an interlock condition on it, and you keep that condition for at least twelve months. It costs you around $2,600 for the year, and you pay it, not the court.
The magistrate does not order any of this, which is why it takes people by surprise. The court deals with the fine and the disqualification, and the interlock comes later from Transport and Main Roads under part 3B of the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1995 (Qld). Our drink driving penalty estimator gives you an indication of where your reading sits, and Sacha will tell you at the first consultation whether the program is coming for you.
Your Reading Decides Whether You Are in the Program
Not every drink driving conviction puts you in it. It depends on what you blew and what you have been convicted of before.
You blew 0.100 or above. This is where most people meet the program for the first time, and it applies even if it is your first offence and you have never been in trouble before. Anything from 0.100 up is enough.
You blew 0.150 or above, or you were charged with DUI. You are in the program, and no work licence is available for that charge either, so you serve the whole disqualification and then start the twelve months.
You refused the breath or blood test at the station. Refusing does not keep you out of the program. It puts you in it, on the same footing as a high reading.
You blew under 0.100 but you have a drink driving conviction from the last five years. One low reading on its own does not put you in the program. A second one within five years does. Our article on repeat drink driving sets out what else changes on a second offence.
Dangerous driving with alcohol as part of it. A dangerous operation conviction carrying the circumstance that you were adversely affected by alcohol counts — and those charges bring far bigger problems than the interlock.
If none of those apply to you — a single reading under 0.100 and nothing behind it — the program does not touch you. You serve the disqualification and get an ordinary licence back at the end of it.
A Work Licence Does Not Get You Out of It
This is the thing clients are most often wrong about. A work licence keeps you driving during the disqualification, but the interlock condition is attached to it, so the device still goes on the car.
The device goes on the car you drive for work. If that vehicle belongs to your employer, your employer has to agree to it being fitted. That is a conversation to have before the application is filed, not after the magistrate has granted it.
You can nominate more than one car. Your own, your partner's, a work vehicle — you can drive any of them, as long as each has a device in it and you have nominated it.
Everyone else who drives that car blows into it too. The device does not know whose car it is. Your partner, your kids, anyone who borrows it — they blow and have their photograph taken like you do.
The work licence starts your twelve months early. Your interlock time runs from the day the court grants the restricted licence, not from the end of the disqualification. So the work licence does not avoid the program, but it does mean you can be finished with it sooner — sometimes by the time the disqualification is over.
Whether a work licence is open to you at all depends on your reading, your licence type and your history. Our work licence eligibility tool gives you an answer in a couple of minutes, and our work licence guide explains what the application involves.
What It Costs You
The money is what most people want to know first. You pay the interlock company, not Transport and Main Roads and not the court, and nothing starts until the device is in the car.
Around $2,600 for the twelve months. That is the estimate Transport and Main Roads publishes, and it covers installation, the lease, servicing, uploading the data and taking the device out at the end. Breaching the rules of the program adds fees on top [qld.gov.au, 2026-08-21].
35 per cent off if you hold a concession card. A current Health Care Card or Pensioner Concession Card gets you that discount from the provider. It does not reduce what you pay for the licence itself.
The whole cost covered if you are on a low income. Transport and Main Roads pays the provider directly if you are under their thresholds — for a single person in the workforce with no children, income under $38,446.28 and under $3,000 in savings. Once in five years, on their form F4899.
Licence fees on top of the device. You pay a fee for the interlock condition as well as the ordinary licence fee when you go in to get the licence.
You cannot drive the car to the fitting appointment. You get the licence first and the device second, so somebody else has to take the car to the installer for you.
Twelve Months Only Counts While the Device Is On the Car
The twelve months is a minimum, not a length. It only ticks over while you actually hold the licence and have a device fitted, and there are three ways it stretches out.
Taking the device off stops the clock. If you let the licence lapse or have the device removed, the twelve months pauses where it is and picks up again when it goes back on. It does not have to be twelve months in a row, but it does have to be twelve months.
Alcohol in the last four months puts four more months on. The year runs as eight months of getting used to it, then four months where your record is what counts. Blow a positive sample in that final stretch and your finish date moves out four months from that day, every time it happens.
Missing a service does the same thing. The device is serviced a month after it goes in and then every three months. Miss an appointment and it locks you out permanently until it is serviced, and that lockout counts against you the same as a positive sample would.
An extension can be challenged. If the sample was someone else's, the device was not working properly, or the service was done and simply not recorded, you can ask for the extension to be reviewed. Do that as soon as the notice arrives rather than at the end of the year.
Tampering with it adds four months. Driving without blowing, driving knowing the device is faulty, or driving after someone has interfered with it lets Transport and Main Roads extend you. You get a show cause notice and at least 28 days to answer it.
Sitting it out means five years off the road. The condition stays on your licence for five years from the end of your disqualification. So the choice is not twelve months with a device or nothing — it is twelve months with a device or five years of not driving.
Exemptions Are Narrower Than People Hope
An exemption releases you from having to fit a device at all. Sacha will tell you at the outset whether one is realistic for you, because counting on an exemption that never comes is how people end up driving when they should not be.
You live more than 150km from an installer. This is the ground that matters most in Far North Queensland. The radius set by the regulation is 150km from the nearest installer's place of business, and it also has to be outside any area where that installer runs a mobile fitting service. Living on a Queensland island counts too, unless it has a bridge to the mainland — but nine islands are written out of that rule, Magnetic Island among them.
A doctor certifies you cannot blow into it. Where a medical condition means you cannot produce a strong enough breath sample, the certificate goes in with the application.
Severe hardship to you or your family. This is not what most people think it is. Not being able to afford the device, needing to drive for your job, or needing to get to study are all specifically ruled out.
You apply before the disqualification ends. You can lodge it up to six weeks out, or straight away if the court has granted you a work licence, and there is a fee. Transport and Main Roads has 28 days to decide, and if it says nothing in that time the application counts as refused and you can ask for that to be reviewed. An exemption does not put your twelve months on hold either — the time runs while the exemption is in force, the same as it would with a device in the car.
Keep the certificate in the car. If you get an exemption, you have to produce it when a police officer asks why the car you are driving has no device. That is a separate fine of up to $4,835.60 — though not having been given a certificate yet is a reasonable excuse.
Driving Without the Device Is a Fresh Criminal Charge
Once the condition is on your licence, driving a car that does not have a device in it is not a paperwork problem. It is a criminal charge, it goes to court, and the disqualification that comes with it is mandatory.
Driving a car with no device. A fine of up to $4,835.60, and the court must take your licence for three months on top. If you have been convicted of the same thing in the last five years, the fine goes up to $10,362 and the disqualification to six months.
Driving a car that has a device but is not yours. Borrowing a friend's interlock car does not work either. The fine is the same, up to $4,835.60, though this one does not carry a mandatory disqualification with it.
Breaking a restriction on your exemption. If you have an exemption and it comes with conditions, breaking one carries the same fines and the same mandatory three or six months off the road.
Never getting the licence and driving anyway. That is unlicensed driving, which carries a further one to six months off the road — and it counts as a drink driving offence in its own right, so the twelve months starts over on the other side of it.
One last thing. The interlock does not shorten your disqualification and it does not start while you are still disqualified. If anyone tells you a device will get you back on the road early, they are wrong.
Talk to Civic Law
Whether you end up in the program comes down to the charge you are convicted of, and the charge is not always fixed. The difference between a reading of 0.098 and 0.101, or between pleading to one charge rather than another, is the difference between a year of blowing into a device and no device at all.
Sacha will tell you at the first consultation whether the interlock is coming, what the year will cost you, and whether a work licence can shorten the time you spend in it. Call Sacha Sarah Smith on 0425 429 458 before your court date — what gets prepared before you walk in is what changes the outcome.
Drink Driving — Guilty Plea
Work Licence Application