Doesn't work for every judge and it's about how you present yourself to the judge. Go in looking professional or put together and then tell the judge you were ignorant of the law but as soon as you were aware (asking for mercy), you went out the next day and had the tint removed. (shown by the date of the ticket).

And yes, it its illegal now to have >30% tint on any side window while the rear window can still be as dark are you like. They clarified the law about 3 years ago I believe. And yes you can be cited for every window. They usually won't do that unless you're being a serious azz because a judge will likely just throw out the other three if they're on the same docket. But if a cop really wants to mess with you, they can have each officer write the ticket and increasing the chances the tix show up on different dockets to make your world a lil bit more miserable in dealing with them.


It's not about the tints since they dont' really care. But it is illegal and people who do illegal things are sometimes likely to have even more illegal stuff going on around them. So it's a cause for them to stop you and have interaction even if you're doing nothing wrong. The 'safety' aspect only comes into play when they can't see into your car at all because of how dark you decided to go. Otherwise it's just a quality of life stop and the officers are hoping to find more stuff going on (stolen car, drug/alcohol use, outstanding warrants, no license/insurance, etc).

We invite them to 'talk' to us when we modify. So it should be expected and you should be prepared to deal with the consequences. There are tons of us modding and we never take the time to see what's legal or not.

Examples

License plate has to be a minimum distance from the ground
No blue/red lights on vehicle are legal
Sidemarkers have to be amber
Airbags are legal, using them while moving is not
No vehicle can have more than four lamps (exceeding 300 watt candlepower) at a time. I believe the DRL's are just under but most of us switch bulbs which may put us over the limit. Then when you ride with your fogs on = not legal.

 

Cliff - you made some very good point. Thank you sir and everyone who responded.

 

NJ doesn't inspect safety issue now
They only inspect emissions
But I haven't seen someone with tint inspected from my past visit tho

 

^ ^ Tell the officer/judge that you purchased your car used, with tints already on it. The only time I have been issued a tint ticket was by highway patrol. Dude was, and is, a complete douche.

 

thats only because you have a get out of jail free card. haha!

not everyone gets the same courtesy. highway is usually more strict.

if you have a heavily modded car with unlawful mods, then its a good idea to get a beater for daily. saves me from being pulled over.

 

yep highway patrol pulled me over on the belt for "driving too slow" and gave me two tint tickets for the front windows.

but good ole NY DMV courts delayed the date another 6 months so its gonna be a year since the ticket was issued.

 

joe, it just gives you more time to save for that big dollar ticket right there.

I'm thinking that since I don't drive the car very often anymore, I am going to get the front windshield blue 50%. Won't be as obnoxious since the whole car isn't tinted crazy any more. Whatever.

 

Very true, Dennis. I have 20% all around on my daily.
Think its time I go lighter up front. I would hate to get pulled over after the club for my tints then it would be more than just tickets.

 

this is why i used to have and still have (although i don't use them for the same reasons anymore) 1 completely stock car for times when i know i don't want to draw any unwanted attention to myself... sometimes you just want to blend in, and sometimes you don't.

 

I have 50 on the windshield and 20 all the way around. Tint is very common in MD and it helps to have trooper friends to sign your repair orders

 

Or you could just drive your car hard around town enough and get stopped often enough so that they all know you're ok and they just leave you alone. I've had officers tell me that other officers mentioned my car because of the license plate. Most of the time as long as I'm respectful, they move me right along and I don't have to pull out any 'badges'

Rookies are the only ones to give me a hard time and unfortunately that's who they are assigning to write the most QOL (quality of life) tickets while on foot patrol.

(I do curse them the frick out under my breath after I am a block away and finished counting blessings though)

 

cliff is old school and handles it the right way, respect the hustle

 

yea well Chris too bad their not winning...no proof what so ever with the speed i was traveling. i know they can gauge with their eyes but 20mph when im doing 40 and everyone else is doing 50? dont think so.

 

Man thats f...ed up. How slow were you going?

 

You're going to need to tighten up your argument Joe if you really want to win. It's your word against theirs so you'll need to put them on the defensive. Your argument above already implies that you were driving slower than the flow of traffic making you stand out to the cop.

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