Connecticut Window Tint: 35 Per Cent Front and Rear, Plus a 60-Day Report-Back Rule

Section 14-99g(b) states the rule as two prohibitions. No person may operate a motor vehicle with any object or material placed, displayed, installed, affixed or applied in or on it so as to obstruct or reduce the operator’s clear and full view of the road through the front windshield or the side or rear windows, and no person may place, install, affix or apply any transparent material on those surfaces if it alters the colour or reduces light transmittance. Everything lawful therefore lives in the twelve exceptions of subsection (c).

The front side wing vents and windows are covered by § 14-99g(c)(1): total light transmission of not less than thirty-five per cent plus or minus three per cent, luminous reflectance of twenty-seven per cent plus or minus three per cent, and not mirror-like in appearance. Section 14-99g(c)(5) repeats the same thirty-five per cent transmission figure for the right and left side windows behind the driver and for the rearmost window, but sets luminous reflectance at twenty-one per cent to plus or minus three per cent. Two further exceptions loosen the rear glass considerably. Under § 14-99g(c)(10) the rearmost window or windows are excepted outright where the vehicle carries outside mirrors on both the left and right sides located so as to reflect to the driver a view of the highway for at least two hundred feet to the rear, and § 14-99g(c)(6) applies the same dual-mirror condition to all windows behind the driver on a truck, motor bus, trailer, mobile manufactured home or multipurpose passenger vehicle as defined in 49 CFR 571.3.

The windshield is treated separately. Section 14-99g(c)(11) permits transparent material on the topmost portion only, provided the bottom edge of the material is at least twenty-nine inches above the undepressed driver’s seat when measured from a point five inches in front of the bottom of the backrest, with the seat in its rearmost and lowermost position and the vehicle on a level surface, and provided the material is not red or amber in colour. Stickers are handled by § 14-99g(c)(4): a seven-inch square in the lower corner farthest from the driver, and a five-inch square in the lower corner nearest the driver.

A medical exemption sits in the middle of subsection (b) rather than in the list. Any person required for medical reasons to be shielded from direct rays of the sun, and any person operating a vehicle belonging to that person or in which that person is a usual passenger, is exempt from subsection (b). The application goes in writing to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles and must be supported by written documentation of a physician or optometrist licensed to practise in Connecticut. Vehicles in livery service, as defined in § 13b-101, are exempt from subsections (b) through (g) entirely under § 14-99g(h).

Connecticut also polices the supply side. Section 14-99g(d) bars anyone from selling, offering for sale or delivering in the state a motor vehicle whose windshield or window exceeds the standards. Section 14-99g(e) requires a compliance sticker in the lower left corner of each aftermarket-tinted window, legible from outside, pressure-sensitive, self-destructive upon removal and no larger than one square inch, carrying the sticker registration number and a certification of compliance. The implementing regulations adopted under § 14-99g(k) put numbers behind that: Regs. Conn. State Agencies § 14-99g-1(6) defines light transmittance as measured across wavelengths from 400 through 700 nanometres, either corrected for the spectral sensitivity of the human eye or centred at 550 nanometres, and § 14-99g-4(c) requires a manufacturer to submit test results measured with a light transmittance meter accurate to plus or minus two per cent of full scale or ten per cent of the reading, whichever is smaller, certified by a licensed professional engineer or sworn under penalty of false statement. Installers face their own duties: § 14-99g(i) requires a sign at each service counter stating the standards in block letters not less than three inches high, specifying the penalties and displaying actual tinted materials as examples, and § 14-99g(j) requires a mobile installer to give the purchaser the same information in writing.

On where tint is actually checked, Connecticut does not fit the usual two-way split. The state runs no periodic safety inspection. Section 14-12(g) only lets the commissioner decline to register a vehicle ten or more model years old that has not previously been registered in Connecticut until it passes a safety inspection, with the inspection fee capped at fifteen dollars, and § 14-16a covers older vehicles on transfer of ownership and composite or modified antique vehicles. The emissions programme in chapter 246a is biennial with a fee capped at twenty dollars under § 14-164c(k), and the entire chapter contains no light-transmittance figure. But the tint regulation reaches into the inspection that does exist: Regs. Conn. State Agencies § 14-99g-6(d) provides that a motor vehicle for which inspection is required under § 14-12 or § 14-16a shall not pass that inspection if it does not comply with §§ 14-99g-1 to 14-99g-8 or with § 14-99g. So Connecticut measures tint at an inspection lane only for the narrow class of vehicles that must go through one, and enforces it on the road for everyone else.

A violation of any provision of subsections (b) to (e) of § 14-99g is an infraction for each offence, and a separate infraction arises under § 14-99g(g) for operating a vehicle with aftermarket tint that never received a compliance sticker. The consequence Connecticut adds is procedural. Under § 14-99g(f) a person who violates subsection (b) must remove the object or material obstructing the clear and full view of the road and must report within sixty days to the police department that issued the infractions complaint, present the vehicle for inspection and demonstrate compliance.

If that person fails to report and is then cited for a subsequent violation of the section, the vehicle is impounded after notice and an opportunity for hearing. That makes the sixty-day report-back the real deadline on a Connecticut tint ticket, not the fine. Selling, offering for sale or delivering a non-compliant vehicle under § 14-99g(d), and an installer’s failure to post the counter sign under § 14-99g(i), fall on the business rather than the driver.