Rhode Island Requires 70% Light Transmittance on Every Window of a Car

The prohibition comes first. R.I. Gen. Laws § 31-23.3-2 says no person shall own and operate a motor vehicle on a public highway with nontransparent or sunscreen material, window application, reflective film or non-reflective film covering the front windshield, the side windows immediately adjacent to the operator's seat, the side windows immediately to the rear of the operator's seat and the front passenger seat, or the rear window, unless the vehicle meets one of the criteria in § 31-23.3-3. The permission a driver actually relies on is the exemption list in § 31-23.3-4.

Paragraph (3) of that list is the number everyone means by the Rhode Island tint law: film with a total visible light transmittance of not less than seventy percent (70%), measured perpendicular to the surface of the glass. Read the paragraph carefully, because it reaches the whole car in one sentence. The windshield, the side windows next to the driver, the side windows behind the driver and the front passenger, and the rear window are all covered by the same 70% figure. Rhode Island did not write the common two-tier scheme in which the back half of the car may be darker. A rear window tinted to 70% additionally needs two outside mirrors, one on each side, adjusted so the driver has a clear view of the highway behind the vehicle.

The body-style exception in § 31-23.3-4(6) is where most of the darker glass on Rhode Island roads comes from. Sunscreen material on windows behind the driver in trucks, buses, trailers, mobile homes, campers, multipurpose vehicles, charter buses, funeral service vehicles and limousines is exempt from the chapter entirely, provided the vehicle has two federally compliant outside mirrors. A multipurpose passenger vehicle is defined in § 31-23.3-1(2) as a vehicle designed to carry ten persons or fewer, built on a truck chassis or with special features for occasional off-road use, and the DMV inspection manual reads that to include SUVs, vans and other truck-chassis vehicles. Two further definitional limits matter: § 31-23.3-1(6) excludes roof-mounted viewing devices and any window under one hundred fifty (150) square inches from the word window altogether, and § 31-23.3-1(1) takes farm husbandry vehicles out of the definition of motor vehicle.

On the windshield itself, § 31-23.3-4(4) allows a strip limited to the uppermost six inches (6") so long as it does not encroach on the driver's direct forward viewing area as defined in the federal safety standards. The inspection manual applies that as an AS-1 line rule: a visor or tint is acceptable as long as it is not affixed below the AS-1 edge mark, or does not extend more than six inches from the top where the windshield carries no AS-1 mark.

Rhode Island also puts a paper trail on the installer. Under § 31-23.3-3(b) anyone installing a sunscreen device must affix a label no larger than one and one-half (1½) square inches carrying the installer's name and the percentage of light transmittance. The statute says that label goes in the lower left corner of the front window, viewed from outside the vehicle. The inspection manual at § 3.5.15(G)(2) of 280-RICR-30-15-3 instead tells installers to place it on the front windshield near the inspection sticker, and the manual puts the inspection sticker in the lower right corner. Both instruments are in force and they do not name the same corner. The statute is the narrower and higher authority, so a label placed lower left satisfies the statute while still serving the manual's purpose of making the film's rating findable at inspection.

Two individual exemptions exist. Section 31-23.3-4(7) covers a vehicle registered to a person, or that person's legal guardian, who files an affidavit signed by a physician or an optometrist licensed in Rhode Island stating a physical condition that makes darker sunscreening necessary. The Division of Motor Vehicles then issues a sticker applied to the driver's side window to identify the exemption. Section 31-23.3-4(8) covers a vehicle registered and garaged in Rhode Island whose sole purpose is executive security, and it requires written permission from the police chief of the city or town where the vehicle is garaged before the waiver is granted. Law enforcement vehicles are exempt under (2), and vehicles not required to be registered in Rhode Island under (5).

One grandfather clause survives. Section 31-23.3-6 says an owner is not required to remove sunscreening material that was installed by the vehicle manufacturer where the vehicle was purchased before December 1, 1993. Factory privacy glass on a newer car gets no such pass; it has to reach the chapter through the body-style exemption instead.

Tint is enforced in two places. At the lane, the Official Manual for Vehicle Inspection, 280-RICR-30-15-3 § 3.5.15(G), makes any vehicle glass or sunscreening material that fails the manual's requirements a cause for rejection, and the manual repeats the 70% figure and the installer label rule. Cars and light trucks at or under 8,500 pounds are inspected biennially under § 3.3.1(C)(1) of the manual, vehicles over 8,500 pounds annually, and motorcycles before the end of June each year. The inspection fee is fifty-five dollars ($55.00) under R.I. Gen. Laws § 31-47.1-11.

Roadside, § 31-38-2 lets the Director of Revenue, state and local police, and designated Division of Motor Vehicles employees require a driver to stop and submit the vehicle to inspection at any time. An officer who finds non-compliant equipment issues a written notice requiring that the vehicle be put right and approved within five (5) days, and three notices for the same defect in a twelve-month period force the Director to suspend the vehicle's registration.

The money penalty sits in the tint chapter itself rather than in the traffic-tribunal schedule at § 31-41.1-4. Under § 31-23.3-5 the installer who fits non-compliant material is fined not more than two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for each offense, and separately the owner of a vehicle carrying non-compliant film is fined not more than two hundred fifty dollars ($250). Both can be charged over the same window.