Dash Cams in New Jersey: Keep the Camera Off the Windshield

The governing text is short and unforgiving. R.S. 39:3-74 has three parts. The first requires a working windshield cleaning device controlled by the driver. The second provides that "No person shall drive any motor vehicle with any sign, poster, sticker or other non-transparent material upon the front windshield, wings, deflectors, side shields, corner lights adjoining windshield or front side windows of such vehicle other than a certificate or other article required to be so displayed by statute or by regulations of the commissioner." The third provides that "No person shall drive any vehicle so constructed, equipped or loaded as to unduly interfere with the driver's vision to the front and to the sides." A camera body and suction cup are opaque, so the second paragraph reaches them, and the third reaches the cable and the mount however the unit is fixed.

The absence of a permission is provable rather than assumed. The word windshield appears in only 22 sections of the entire New Jersey statutes, and those sections deal with wipers and obstruction, safety glazing, medical sun-screening, mud and dirt deflectors, limousine condition checks, disability cards and placards, and lamp placement. Not one of them creates a list of devices a driver may attach to the glass. Several states answer the dash cam question by pointing at an express allowance for a navigation display or a recording device; New Jersey has no such section to point at. The only affirmative permission to put anything on New Jersey front glass runs the other way, in N.J.A.C. 13:20-1.8, which requires a registered sun-screening installer to place a one inch square label between the approved film and the windshield of a medically exempt vehicle.

That leaves placement as the whole of the practical answer. A camera mounted to the dashboard, or clipped high and centrally behind the rear view mirror where the mirror already occupies the driver's sightline, keeps the device off the sweep of glass the State treats as critical. New Jersey defines that critical area in its sun-screening rules: N.J.A.C. 13:20-1.1 defines the AS-1 line as "the mark at the edge of a sheet of glazing material that delineates the area of the windshield requisite for driving visibility and indicates that portion of the sheet of glazing material having a luminous transmittance of not less than 70 percent." Nothing in R.S. 39:3-74 imports that line, but it is the only place New Jersey law describes where windshield visibility actually matters, and a camera above it is a far weaker target for a summons than one in the middle of the glass.

Recording is on firmer ground than mounting. N.J.S.A. 2A:156A-4(d) provides that it is not unlawful for "a person not acting under color of law to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception," unless the interception is made to commit a criminal or tortious act or another injurious act. A driver recording conversation inside their own car is a party to it, so cabin audio is lawful in New Jersey without asking passengers. That protection ends where the purpose turns wrongful, and the same paragraph expressly attaches the civil liability in N.J.S.A. 2A:156A-24 to a person who unlawfully intercepts or uses such a communication.

One New Jersey rule surprises owners: dash cam footage carries none of the privacy protection the State built for vehicle black box data. N.J.S.A. 39:10B-7, enacted as L.2015, c.60, defines a "recording device" to cover event data recorders, sensing and diagnostic modules, electronic control modules, automatic crash notification systems and geographic information systems, then states that a recording device "shall not include personal recording devices, such as video cameras, dashboard cameras, or mobile telephones with recording capabilities." The same section says recorded data "excludes audio and video data." So the consent, search warrant and court order gates in N.J.S.A. 39:10B-8, which stop anyone but the owner retrieving black box data, do not stand between anyone and your dash cam. Your footage is ordinary evidence, reachable by a discovery request in a civil case in the normal way.

Finally, no inspection station will see the camera. N.J.S.A. 39:8-1(a), amended by L.2010, c.29, restricts the inspection of passenger automobiles and noncommercial trucks to "emissions and emission-related items such as emission control equipment and on-board diagnostics." A windshield obstruction charge in New Jersey comes from a roadside stop by municipal police or the State Police, usually added to whatever prompted the stop.

S. 39:3-74 sets no penalty of its own, so the general provision applies. A. 39:3-86 makes a violation of any provision of chapter three of Title 39 for which no specific penalty is provided punishable by not less than $25 and not more than $500, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding fifteen days, or both. S. 39:3-74 are available to the officer: the non-transparent material paragraph for the camera on the glass, and the undue interference with vision paragraph for a mount or a trailing power cable that blocks the driver's view to the front or the sides.

Nothing in Title 39 authorises seizure of the device or of the footage. A. A. 2A:156A-24 in addition to any other criminal or civil liability imposed by law. A. A. 39:10B-8 give no protection at all to dash cam video in a New Jersey case.