Connecticut Auxiliary Lights: Two of Each, Fixed Mounting Heights, No Extra Colours

Each subsection of § 14-96o adds a different constraint. Spot lamps under subsection (a) are capped at two and must be aimed and used so that no part of the high-intensity portion of the beam strikes the windshield, any window, a mirror or an occupant of another vehicle in use. Fog lamps under subsection (b) are capped at two, mounted between twelve and thirty inches, and aimed so that, with the vehicle unloaded, none of the high-intensity portion of the light to the left of the vehicle’s centre projects, at twenty-five feet ahead, higher than four inches below the level of the centre of the lamp it comes from. Auxiliary passing lamps under subsection (c) sit between twenty-four and forty-two inches, and auxiliary driving lamps under subsection (d) between sixteen and forty-two inches. Both of those cross-refer to § 14-96t, so any combination of head lamps with passing or driving lamps must satisfy the multiple-beam road-lighting requirements. Section 14-96a(c) explains how the heights are taken: measured from the centre of the lamp to the level ground on which the vehicle stands, with the vehicle unloaded.

How many of those lamps may be lit at once is answered in a different section. Section 14-96y(b) provides that where a vehicle equipped with the required head lamps also carries auxiliary lamps, a spot lamp or any other front lamp projecting a beam of intensity greater than three hundred candlepower, not more than four such lamps in total may be lighted at any one time on the highway. Section 14-96p(c) adds the aiming rule for high-output accessory lighting that is not a head lamp, spot lamp or auxiliary driving lamp: any lamp projecting more than three hundred candlepower must be directed so that no part of the beam strikes the roadway more than seventy-five feet from the vehicle.

Colour is the harder limit. Section 14-96p(a) permits no light visible from the front other than white, yellow or amber, no light visible from the rear other than red, yellow, amber or white, and no red light visible from directly in front of the centre of the vehicle. Section 14-96p(b) prohibits flashing lights outright with a short list of exceptions: red and yellow lights receiving or discharging students on school buses, white lights on the top rear of school buses, turn indicators, hazard use for a disabled vehicle stopped in a hazardous location, a vehicle unable to hold forty miles per hour on a limited access divided highway because of the grade, a vehicle moving so slowly as to obstruct or endanger following traffic, a student transportation vehicle carrying fifteen or fewer students with disabilities while loading, and red lights on a frozen dessert truck under § 14-283f.

Anything outside those lists needs a permit under § 14-96q. A permit is required for the use of colored or flashing lights, with two exceptions in subsection (a) for out-of-state escort and oversize-load vehicles operating under a Department of Transportation permit issued under § 14-270, and for vehicles owned or leased by and registered to a government entity. Where a permit is needed, § 14-96q(b) sets an annual fee of twenty dollars per vehicle for any applicant other than the state or a metropolitan district, town, city or borough. The categories are specific to Connecticut’s reliance on volunteers. A flashing blue light may be used by an active member of a volunteer fire department or company, or of an organized civil preparedness auxiliary fire company, who holds a permit from the chief executive officer of that department, while on the way to or at the scene of a fire or other emergency. A flashing green or blue light may be used the same way by an active member of a volunteer ambulance association or company. Flashing red lights are available by permit to paid and volunteer fire chiefs and their deputies and assistants, up to five individuals per department in each category, to fire police on a stationary vehicle during traffic direction at an emergency scene, and to emergency medical service organization chief executives. Yellow or amber lights under subsection (f) extend to maintenance vehicles and to oversize or overweight escort vehicles operating under a § 14-270 permit.

One prohibition has no permit route at all. Section 14-96q(k) provides that no person other than a police officer or a Department of Motor Vehicles inspector operating a state or local police vehicle may operate a motor vehicle displaying a steady blue or steady red illuminated light, or both, visible externally from the front. The flashing blue light a volunteer firefighter may use is exactly that, flashing, and the steady version is closed to everyone outside a police vehicle.

Section 14-96o(e) makes operating a motor vehicle with lamps that do not conform to that section an infraction, and § 14-96q(l) makes the use of colored and flashing lights except as authorized an infraction as well. Public Act 25-19, effective October 1, 2025, changed how those infractions are routed. It added CGS § 14-96a(e), which provides that where a violation concerning the number, placement or intensity of a lamp or illuminating device, or any other technical specification in §§ 14-96b to 14-96aa, would otherwise be a violation of § 14-96a, it shall be enforced under the specific section instead and not under § 14-96a.

The same act rewrote the head lamp penalty in § 14-96y(c): an operator whose vehicle does not have the two required lamps commits an infraction, except that where at least one such lamp is present the operator receives a warning for defective equipment under § 14-103(c) on a first offence, and an infraction only on a subsequent violation. Connecticut has no periodic safety inspection to catch lighting defects, so these are roadside determinations, and a permit issued under § 14-96q may be revoked by the chief executive officer who issued it or by that officer’s successor.