Hawaii Allows Studded Snow Tires Only on Mauna Kea

The limit in Hawaii is geographic, not seasonal. Mainland statutes usually name an opening and a closing date, and drivers arriving from those states look for the Hawaii window. There is none. Section 291-33 is a road-surface protection rule sitting in the equipment part of HRS chapter 291, and its operative test is whether the wheel carries a projection destructive to the road surfaces. Rubber blocks are excluded from that list by name; metal studs are not. Because the section reaches any vehicle, motor vehicle, or other power vehicle, it is not confined to passenger cars, and subsection (a) extends the same prohibition to rings or flanges on guiding or steering wheels.

The two permissions are narrow and read as a closed list. The first, ordinary detachable tire or skid chains, carries no geographic or calendar limit at all, so chains are the lawful traction option for a driver heading up Mauna Kea or Haleakala in bad weather. The second is the studded-snow-tire permission, and it is written to two specific places on Hawaii Island: the Mauna Kea access road above Hale Pohaku, and any other road within the Mauna Kea Science Reserve leased to the University of Hawaii. A studded tire that is lawful above Hale Pohaku becomes unlawful once the vehicle descends past that point onto the road below, and it was never lawful on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Molokai or Lanai.

That carve-out was not in the original 1941 law. It arrived through Act 59 of the 1991 session, S.B. No. 1312, a bill titled Relating to the University of Hawaii and approved on April 26, 1991, which inserted the studded-snow-tire clause alongside the existing chains exception. The provenance explains the drafting: the permission exists to serve access to the summit observatories on land the University holds under lease, not to give the general motoring public a winter tire option. Section 291-33 was last touched by Act 70 of 2020, section 40.

Subsection (b) adds a separate exemption for traction engines, tractors and other tracklaying vehicles, but only where the portions of the movable tracks touching the roadway present plane surfaces of sufficient area to prevent damage. A tracked machine with aggressive grousers does not qualify.

A breach of section 291-33 is a violation under HRS section 291-37(a), which sets a fine of not less than $25 nor more than $1,800 for any act prohibited by sections 291-2 to 291-33 or by rules adopted to enforce them. It is not a misdemeanor and carries no jail exposure. Section 291-37 also directs that all penalties imposed and collected for violations of sections 291-33 through 291-36 be paid into the state highway fund, which matches the road-damage purpose of the prohibition. Citations are written by the county police department for the island where the stop happens, because Hawaii has no statewide highway patrol, and are answered in the district court of that circuit.