Vermont Bans Aftermarket Front Tint Outright and Never Names a VLT Number

The operative sentence is a flat prohibition, not a light standard. Section 1125(a) reaches material or items "painted or adhered on or over, or hung in back of" any transparent part of the windshield, the vent windows, and the side windows located immediately to the left and right of the operator. A hanging object such as an air freshener or a parking hangtag is treated more leniently: the section says the hanging-item branch applies only when the item materially obstructs the driver's view. Adhered film gets no such qualifier, so a 70 percent film and a 5 percent film are the same violation in Vermont.

Subsection (b) is a closed list of what may sit on the front glass, and nothing on it is tint. It allows a space not over four inches high and 12 inches long in the lower right-hand corner of the windshield; whatever space the Commissioner specifies for a sticker required by governmental regulation; a space not over two inches high and two and one-half inches long in the upper left-hand corner; equipment placed behind the windshield by a government employee or a volunteer emergency responder operating an authorized emergency vehicle; dealer stickers of three by six inches upper left and four by 18 inches upper right on a car held for sale by a licensed automobile dealer; and a rearview mirror or an electronic toll-collection transponder mounted between the roof line and the mirror post or behind the mirror.

The medical route in subsection (c) is where Vermont's only percentage lives, and the state does not set it. The Commissioner may grant an exemption to an applicant who is required for medical reasons to be shielded from the rays of the sun and who files a document signed by a licensed physician or optometrist certifying medical necessity. DMV form VN-022, revision 08/2025, asks the physician or optometrist to fill in "Percentage of VLT Recommended Up to: ____%" and to check either a four-year permit for a temporary condition or an indefinite permit for a condition that is permanent and stable. The statute requires the certification to be renewed every four years, except that where a clinician has already certified the condition as permanent and stable the holder may renew without submitting a new signed form. Tint granted this way is confined to the vent windows and the side windows immediately left and right of the operator, and it dies with the car: the exemption terminates on transfer of the approved vehicle and the seller must strip the film at that point. Film that tears, bubbles, or is otherwise worn enough to prohibit clear vision has to be removed or replaced. The permit itself must ride in the primary listed vehicle, with a copy in each additional exempted vehicle, and it is subject to inspection by a law enforcement officer on request.

Behind the front seats the rule inverts. Subsection (d) lets the rear side windows and the back window be obstructed to any degree, including with dark film, so long as the vehicle is equipped on each side with a securely attached mirror giving the operator a clear view of the roadway to the rear and on both sides.

Vermont puts nearly every registered passenger vehicle through an annual safety and visual emissions inspection under 23 V.S.A. § 1222(a), which is why drivers assume tint is metered here. It is not. The Periodic Inspection Manual, form VN-113 in its 3/2026 revision, contains no visible-light-transmittance figure anywhere and no light meter in the procedure. In the Pleasure Car and Light Truck section the mechanic must reject the vehicle if "There is an aftermarket tint applied to the windshield," but on the driver's left and right windows aftermarket tint is only an advise-the-customer item, worded as a warning that those windows "may be in violation of State Law 23 V.S.A. § 1125." A front side window fails the lane only for nontransparent matter or a safety-glass defect. The Heavy Truck and Bus section is stricter and does reject unauthorized tinting material sprayed, pasted, stuck, or otherwise applied to the windshield or the windows directly to the right or left of the driver. So for an ordinary car the inspection station hands you a notice, and the real enforcement of front-window tint happens at the roadside.

A tint violation is a traffic violation, not a crime. 00. chapter 29, so the ticket is contested there rather than in criminal court. § 2502, so a tint ticket by itself does not move a driver toward the 10-points-in-two-years suspension trigger in § 2505. The separate glazing rule in § 1242 does carry an administrative sanction: the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles shall suspend the registration of a vehicle found operating without safety glass in its doors, windows, and windshield until the defect is cured.

At inspection, a windshield with aftermarket film is a hard rejection under VN-113 and the vehicle cannot receive a certificate of inspection; operating without a valid certificate is itself a violation of § 1222(c).