Alabama Studded Tires: No Season, Allowed Only When Snow, Rain or Skid Conditions Require Them

The Alabama rule is a prohibition with two written exceptions, not a calendar. Section 32-5-210(b) starts from a flat ban: no tire on a vehicle moved on a highway may carry on its periphery any block, stud, flange, cleat or spike, or any other protuberance of a material other than rubber, that projects beyond the tread of the traction surface. Everything a driver is allowed to do with studs comes out of the two exceptions that follow in the same sentence. The first covers farm machinery whose tires have protuberances "which will not injure the highway." The second is the one that matters to a passenger car: tire chains, metal studded tires and safety spike tires "of reasonable proportions" may be used upon any vehicle when required for safety because of snow, rain, or other conditions tending to cause a vehicle to slide or skid.

Two consequences follow from that drafting. The trigger is a road condition, not a date, so there is no autumn-to-spring window to consult and no Alabama Department of Transportation notice that opens or closes a season. And the permission is conditional in both directions: because the exception is worded around what is "required for safety," studs left on a car through a dry Alabama summer are not covered by the exception and fall back under the subsection (b) prohibition. The statute fixes no stud count, no protrusion measurement in thousandths of an inch, no tire-width limit and no vehicle-class limit. The only quantitative words are "of reasonable proportions," which the section leaves undefined.

Section 32-5-210(d) adds a separate permit route that is easy to misread as a studded-tire permit. It is not. It lets the Department of Public Safety and local authorities, in their discretion, issue special permits authorizing highway operation of traction engines or tractors with movable tracks carrying transverse corrugations, or of farm tractors and other farm machinery. That is a tracked-and-agricultural-equipment permit, and nothing in the section makes a permit available for studded tires on a car. The Department of Public Safety named there now sits inside the Alabama State Law Enforcement Agency: Ala. Code § 41-27-2(a) makes the Secretary of ALEA the appointing authority and department head of the Department of Public Safety, with power to delegate those functions to that department's Director.

The rest of § 32-5-210 is where an Alabama tire stop usually goes. Subsection (a) requires pneumatic tires of sufficient traction surface for the vehicle's capacity, as prescribed by the Director of Public Safety. Subsection (a)(1) fixes the legal minimum tread at 2/32 inch, or .15875 centimeters, measured in any two adjacent tread grooves at three equally spaced intervals around the circumference of the tire and never at a tread wear indicator. It defines an unsafe tire as one with any ply or cord exposed, any bump, bulge or separation, any tread or sidewall crack, cut or snag over one inch long and deep enough to expose the body cords, any tire marked "not for highway use," "for racing purposes only" or "unsafe for highway use," and any tire regrooved or recut below the original groove depth unless it carries extra undertread rubber for that purpose and is identified as such. Tires on the dead axle of a vehicle equipped with a dead axle are expressly carved out of both the tread-depth rule and the prohibitions of the section. Subsection (a)(2) extends the same standard to sellers, making it unlawful to sell or offer for sale tires, or a vehicle equipped with tires, that are unsafe or below 2/32 inch. Subsection (c) governs solid rubber tires, which must carry rubber on the entire traction surface at least four inches wide and one inch thick above the edge of the flange around the whole periphery.

Section 32-5-210 carries no penalty of its own, so the general Title 32 penalty applies. Ala. Code § 32-5A-8(a) makes it a misdemeanor to violate any provision of that chapter or of Title 32 unless the violation is declared a felony, and § 32-5A-8(b) sets the ladder where no other penalty is provided: a first conviction draws a fine of not more than $100 or up to 10 days' imprisonment; a second offense committed within one year of the first draws up to $200 or up to 30 days or both; a third or subsequent offense within one year of the first draws up to $500 or up to three months or both.

Enforcement is roadside. Ala. Code § 32-5-310 makes it the duty of state troopers, sheriffs and deputies, constables, municipal police and marshals, county police, state and county license inspectors and specially appointed state officers to enforce the chapter and to arrest for violations, without a warrant if the offense happens in the officer's presence. A driver arrested without a warrant may elect to be taken immediately before the nearest court with jurisdiction; if he declines, the officer must take a bail bond of not more than $300, may not take a cash bond, and must report the bond to the court within 18 hours.