Georgia mandates winter traction only on roads GDOT limits in a declared emergency

O.C.G.A. § 32-6-5 was created as a new Code section by 2012 Ga. Laws Act 773 and rewritten two years later by 2014 Ga. Laws Act 638, which is the version in force. Georgia built the section around an event rather than a season. Nothing in it turns on the date, the elevation or the county. The trigger is the Department of Transportation deciding, during a declared state of emergency for inclement weather that results in dangerous driving conditions, to close or limit access to a portion of road on the state highway system, and then posting signage of adequate size saying so. Without that emergency declaration and that signage the section imposes no equipment duty on anyone.

When the trigger fires, the qualifying equipment is a closed list of three. The posted signage must tell motorists that vehicles have to be equipped with tire chains, four-wheel drive with adequate tires for existing conditions, or snow tires carrying a manufacturer's all weather rating, and that it is unlawful to proceed without such equipment. The statute then defines what counts as a chain in unusually concrete terms: metal chains consisting of two circular metal loops, one on each side of the tire, connected by not less than nine evenly spaced chains across the tread. The 2014 Act added the words that give the Department of Public Safety a role, allowing any other traction device that provides traction equal to or exceeding those metal chains under similar conditions as provided for by the commissioner's rules and regulations.

Those rules exist and they are short. Chapter 570-37 of the Georgia Administrative Code states that its purpose is to establish the type of tire chains and other traction devices which comply with O.C.G.A. § 32-6-5. Rule 570-37-.02 defines an other traction device as any device which, when in use, is affixed to or in contact with the drive wheels of a commercial vehicle and provides a level of additional traction greater than or equal to a tire chain as defined in the chapter. Rule 570-37-.03 then requires that any tire chain or other traction device meeting the chapter's requirements be approved by the commissioner of public safety. The practical effect is that the alternative to chains is framed around commercial drive wheels and runs through an approval step, not around what a passenger car owner bolts on.

Heavy vehicles carry a sharper duty inside the same subsection. Operators of commercial motor vehicles as defined by O.C.G.A. § 40-1-1 with four or more drive wheels, buses excepted, must chain their outermost drive wheel tires before travelling a road declared limited access in a declared winter weather emergency, and bus and motor coach operators must chain at least two drive wheel tires. The section's final subsection carves out tow operators, whether towing or travelling to the site of a vehicle to be towed, and emergency responders travelling the roadway to fulfil their duties.

Because the duty is event-driven, the practical question for a Georgia driver is not what month it is but whether the Governor has declared a state of emergency and whether the Department of Transportation has posted limited-access signs on the route. Georgia's winter events are short, regional and concentrated in the north of the state, so the same road can be unrestricted one week and closed to unequipped vehicles the next. The Department of Transportation posts the signage and the state highway system is the only network the section reaches, so county roads and city streets are outside it unless a local authority acts under its own powers.

Section 32-6-5 makes it unlawful to proceed on a road that has been signed as limited access without the equipment the signage requires. 00. 00 is a ceiling, and it attaches to the consequence, the crash or the blockage, rather than to the bare fact of driving unequipped. Enforcement is by the officers policing the closure, and the commercial chaining duties are enforced against the operator of the commercial motor vehicle, bus or motor coach. Tow operators and emergency responders are exempt from the section by its own terms.

Because equipment claiming to be an other traction device must be approved by the commissioner of public safety under Ga. Comp. r. 03, an unapproved device does not satisfy the requirement no matter how it performs.