Arkansas Measures Windshield Mounts From the Bottom, Not the Top

Most states measure a windshield mounting allowance downward from the top of the glass or from the AS-1 line. Arkansas measures upward from the bottom. Ark. Code § 27-37-304(a)(1)(A), as rewritten by Act 1251 of 1999, makes it unlawful to operate a motor vehicle that has any substance or material, except rearview mirrors and decals required by law, attached to the windshield at any point more than four and one-half inches above the bottom of the windshield, if the substance or material obstructs the operator's view or the safe operation of the vehicle. Read the two halves together: a camera mounted inside that bottom four and one-half inch band is outside the prohibition whatever it looks like, and a camera mounted above the band is unlawful only where it actually obstructs the view or the safe operation. There is no measured allowance at the top of the glass to fall back on, which is why a suction cup behind the mirror is a judgment call in Arkansas and a dash mount low on the glass is not.

Subsection (a)(1)(B) is stricter and has no height allowance at all. It is unlawful to operate a motor vehicle that has any substance or material attached to the window of either front door except substances or materials attached by the manufacturer, if the substance or material obstructs the operator's view or the safe operation of the vehicle. That reaches suction mounts and adhesive brackets on the driver's and front passenger's door glass, and the only carve-out is for what the factory installed. Anyone running a second rear-facing camera or a phone cradle on the door window is inside this subsection rather than the windshield one.

The same 1999 act rewrote the neighbouring section. Ark. Code § 27-37-302 says no person shall drive any motor vehicle with any sign, poster, or other nontransparent material upon the front windshield, sidewings, side, or rear windows of the vehicle other than a certificate or other paper required to be so displayed by law if it obstructs the operator's view or the safe operation of the vehicle. A camera body, a mount and a cable run are all nontransparent material, so a large mount can be reached by § 27-37-302 as well as by § 27-37-304, and both turn on the same obstruction test.

Two limits keep § 27-37-304 from sweeping too widely. Subsection (a)(2) disapplies the section to motorists driving vehicles registered in other states that have enacted legislation regulating the shading of windshields or windows, so a visiting driver is measured by the law of the plate. Subsection (b) says nothing in the section prohibits the shading or tinting of windows of newly manufactured automobiles so long as they comply with all federal laws, which protects factory glass and factory-installed camera and sensor housings behind the mirror.

What Arkansas does not regulate is the recording itself. There is no statute on dash camera video, no evidentiary rule peculiar to it, and no registration or notice requirement. Audio is the one place the Code speaks: Ark. Code § 5-60-120 makes interception unlawful only where the recorder is neither a party to the communication nor acting with the prior consent of a party, so a camera that records conversation inside your own car with you present is outside the offense. Nothing in Title 27 requires you to switch a camera off, and nothing in it gives an officer a right to the footage without the usual process.

Ark. Code § 27-37-304(c) makes a violation of that section a Class C misdemeanor. Under Ark. Code § 5-4-401(b)(3) that carries a sentence not exceeding 30 days, and under § 5-4-201(b)(3) a fine not exceeding $500. The charge is written at the roadside, because Arkansas runs no periodic motor vehicle safety inspection: the Code's only use of the phrase "motor vehicle inspection" is a 1977 bond act reprinted in the Title 19 appendix. In practice the argument is about the obstruction element rather than the measurement, since both § 27-37-304(a)(1) and § 27-37-302 require that the item actually obstruct the operator's view or the safe operation of the vehicle before the offense is complete. A mount low on the glass, inside the bottom four and one-half inches, does not reach the element at all.