Kentucky's Windshield Is a Closed List of Three Items, and a Dash Cam Is Not One of Them

The structure of KRS 189.110 is what does the work here, and it is worth reading as a whole. Subsection (1) makes a windshield in a fixed and upright position with federally compliant safety glazing mandatory on every motor vehicle operated on Kentucky public roads, excepting only a motorcycle or an implement of husbandry. Subsection (2) then treats that mandatory windshield as protected space: nothing may be attached to it or located in or upon it except the three enumerated items. The list is exhaustive by its own drafting, because it is introduced by the words except the following. Kentucky's General Assembly last touched this section in 2024 Ky. Acts ch. 17, sec. 1, effective July 15, 2024, and did not use that opportunity to add a device exception.

The practical Kentucky reading, then, is that the mounting surface matters far more than the camera. A camera stuck to the inside of the glass is a product located in or upon the windshield. A camera on the dashboard, clipped to a sun visor, or bonded to the back of the rear-view mirror housing is not attached to or located upon the windshield, and KRS 189.110(2) has nothing to say about it. That is a genuine Kentucky answer, not a hedge, and it is why the mirror-tuck mount is the safe choice in the Commonwealth.

What does not rescue a windshield mount is the obstruction statute, which is commonly assumed to be the governing rule and is not. KRS 189.470 is titled Obstruction to operator's view or control, but its two subsections are about cargo and people: subsection (1) forbids operating a vehicle so loaded, or with more than three persons in the front seat, as to obstruct the view to the front or sides or interfere with control, and subsection (2) forbids a passenger riding in a position that interferes with the operator's view or control. Neither subsection reaches a mounted device. The only general Kentucky equipment duty that could is KRS 189.020, which requires every vehicle on a highway to be so equipped as to make a minimum of noise, smoke or other nuisance, to protect the rights of other traffic and to promote the public safety.

Kentucky commercial drivers are governed by a different and more permissive rule, which is an unusual inversion. 601 KAR 1:005, Section 2(9) adopts 49 C.F.R. Part 393 as Kentucky law for any commercial motor vehicle meeting the 49 C.F.R. 390.5 definition, operating for hire or in private carriage, interstate or intrastate. Within that part, 49 C.F.R. 393.60(e)(1)(ii) expressly allows vehicle safety technologies to be mounted on the interior of the windshield, not more than 216 mm (8.5 inches) below the upper edge of the wiper-swept area, not more than 175 mm (7 inches) above its lower edge, and outside the driver's sight lines to the road and to highway signs and signals. The definition of vehicle safety technology in 49 C.F.R. 393.5 names a driver camera system in terms. So a Kentucky truck driver has a measured windshield envelope for a camera, and a Kentucky motorist in a private car has none.

Two further Kentucky specifics affect where a second camera can go. KRS 189.110(5) forbids operating a registered vehicle whose rear window is composed of, covered by or treated with any material that makes the window nontransparent unless the vehicle carries side mirrors on both sides, which is the provision to satisfy before blocking rear glass with a rear-facing unit and its cabling. KRS 189.110(10) is the only decorative allowance the section grants for the rear window at all, and it is narrow: a representation of the American flag no larger than five inches by eight inches, placed in a lower corner. On the audio side, a dash cam that records inside the cabin does not offend Kentucky's eavesdropping chapter when the driver is one of the parties, because KRS 526.010 defines eavesdrop as overhearing, recording, amplifying or transmitting a wire or oral communication of others without the consent of at least one party to it.

990(1)(a) sets the penalty for that section at a fine of not less than twenty dollars and not more than one hundred dollars for each offense. It is a fine-only violation with no licence points attached by the section itself. 110 does not apply to a camera: subsection (9) makes it a Class B misdemeanor to apply sunscreening materials in violation of the section, and subsection (8) requires tinted material that fails the transmittance minimums to be removed immediately, both of which are aimed at film and at the installers who fit it, not at a device on a bracket.

The three percent measurement tolerance in subsection (7) likewise applies only to the percentage measurements required by subsections (2) to (4), so it gives a camera mount nothing. Detection in Kentucky is roadside only, because the Commonwealth runs no periodic safety inspection of ordinary vehicles: the Legislative Research Commission's KAR index for Title 601 marks Chapter 010, Motor Vehicle Inspection, as Inactive. 990(1)(a) fines a violation of any administrative regulation issued under KRS Chapter 281 not less than twenty five dollars and not more than two hundred dollars.