Arkansas Allows Metal Studded Tires Only From November 15 to April 15

The studded-tire allowance sits in Title 27, Subtitle 3 of the Arkansas Code, in Chapter 37 (Equipment Regulations), Subchapter 4, which is headed simply "Tires". Two sections do all the work. A.C.A. § 27-37-401(c) states the default: no tire moved on a highway may carry "any block, stud, flange, cleat, spike, or any other protuberances of any material except rubber" projecting beyond the tread of the traction surface. A.C.A. § 27-37-402(a) then carves the seasonal exception out of that ban, and it is the only route by which a stud becomes lawful in Arkansas.

The exception is narrow in two directions at once. The window runs from November 15 of each year until April 15 of the following year, so studs are unlawful for the seven months from April 16 to November 14 no matter what the weather does. And within the window the stud itself must protrude "not more than one-sixteenth inch" from the surface of the rubber tread, which rules out aggressive rally-style pins even in January. Arkansas sets no separate rule for out-of-state plates, no permit route for studs, and no exemption for four-wheel-drive vehicles or for the mountain counties of the Ozarks and Ouachitas.

Section 27-37-401(c) lists exactly three things that may break the no-protuberance rule. Farm machinery may run tires with protuberances "which will not injure the highway". Tire chains "of reasonable proportions" may be used on any vehicle "when required for safety", which is a year-round allowance with no calendar attached to it, so a driver caught out by an ice storm in late April still has a legal traction option. And metal studded tires may be used as prescribed in § 27-37-402. Everything else stays prohibited all year, including nonpneumatic or solid rubber tire mountings under § 27-37-401(a)(2) and any metal tire in contact with the roadway under § 27-37-401(b).

Arkansas also wrote a federal kill switch into the statute that most states did not. Under § 27-37-402(b), if Congress enacts legislation or any federal agency adopts regulations prohibiting metal studded tires on public highways, the authorisation in subsection (a) "shall terminate" and studs become unlawful in Arkansas at any time thereafter. No further act of the General Assembly would be needed for that to take effect.

For oversized equipment there is a permit route, but it is not a studded-tire permit. Section 27-37-401(d) lets the State Highway Commission and local authorities, each within their own jurisdiction, issue special permits for traction engines or tractors with movable tracks carrying transverse corrugations, and for farm tractors and other farm machinery whose operation on a highway would otherwise be barred by the subchapter.

The substance of both sections is old and has not moved. Section 27-37-402 came in as Acts 1977, No. 94, §§ 1-3, and was carried into the 1987 Code from A.S.A. 1947, §§ 75-731.1 to 75-731.3. Section 27-37-401 goes back to Acts 1937, No. 300, § 129, and was last amended by Acts 1969, No. 95, § 1. A full-text search of every Arkansas act from the 1987 Regular Session through the 2026 sessions returns no hit for "metal studded tires", so neither the season nor the one-sixteenth-inch figure has been revisited in the modern statutory record.

Operating a motor vehicle on an Arkansas highway with metal studded tires outside the November 15 to April 15 window is expressly made unlawful by A.C.A. § 27-37-402(c)(1). Subsection (c)(2) grades the offence: a person violating the section "shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five dollars ($25.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00)." That is a criminal disposition rather than an equipment-correction notice, so the charge proceeds to conviction and fine rather than being dismissed on proof that the tires were changed. A tire carrying studs, cleats or spikes that fall outside the § 27-37-402 allowance also violates the general prohibition in § 27-37-401(c), which the studded-tire section exists to except, and a solid rubber or metal tire violates § 27-37-401(a)(2) and (b) independently of the season.