Dash Cam Mounting and the Windshield Obstruction Rule

The whole mounting question turns on one sentence. RCW 46.37.410(2) provides that "No person shall drive any motor vehicle with any sign, poster, or other nontransparent material upon the front windshield, side wings, or side or rear windows of such vehicle which obstructs the driver's clear view of the highway or any intersecting highway." A camera body is nontransparent material on the windshield, so the only question an officer asks is whether it obstructs the clear view. That is a functional test rather than a measured zone: Washington fixes no maximum device footprint in square inches and no permitted rectangle on the glass. Mount behind the rearview mirror, inside the area the mirror already blocks, and there is nothing to obstruct. A camera stuck in the middle of the sweep, low on the driver's side, or on the A-pillar side of the mirror is where the rule bites.

Washington never wrote a device exemption. Several states carved a navigation or recording device out of their windshield rule; Washington did not. The full text of chapter 46.37 RCW, the vehicle equipment chapter, contains no reference to a camera, to global positioning, or to a navigation display, and neither does chapter 46.61 RCW. The only part of the windshield the code singles out at all is the strip addressed by RCW 46.37.430(5)(e), which lets sunscreening material run along the top edge so long as it stays transparent and does not "extend into the AS-1 portion of the windshield or extend more than six inches from the top of the windshield." That provision governs film, not hardware, but it tells you which band of glass Washington already accepts as marginal to the driver's view.

The affirmative permission comes from RCW 46.37.010(3): "Nothing contained in this chapter or the state patrol's regulations shall be construed to prohibit the use of additional parts and accessories on any vehicle not inconsistent with the provisions of this chapter or the state patrol's regulations." A dash camera is exactly such an accessory. It becomes inconsistent, and therefore unlawful, at the point it obstructs the view under RCW 46.37.410(2).

A rear-facing camera in the back window is judged by a different and more generous standard. RCW 46.37.430(6)(d) preserves "Recreational products, such as toys, cartoon characters, stuffed animals, signs, and any other vision-reducing article or material to be applied to or placed in windows behind the driver provided that they do not interfere, in their size or position, with the driver's ability to see other vehicles, persons, or objects." A cabin or rear camera mounted behind the driver falls inside that language, so long as it does not block the mirror view. RCW 46.37.410(4) separately requires every windshield wiper to be maintained in good working order, which matters if a hard-wired camera's cable routing interferes with the wiper linkage or the washer nozzle.

Operating the camera is regulated even though owning it is not. RCW 46.61.672 makes it an infraction to use a personal electronic device while driving, and defines a personal electronic device as a portable device capable of wireless communication or electronic data retrieval that is "not manufactured primarily for hands-free use in a motor vehicle." A purpose-built dash camera that runs on its own falls outside that definition, but a phone running a dash camera app does not: RCW 46.61.672(6)(c) treats holding the device in either hand, using a finger to view or retrieve data, and "Watching video on a personal electronic device" all as use. RCW 46.61.672(3) preempts the field, so no Washington city may add its own rule. A second or subsequent offence draws twice the penalty under RCW 46.61.672(4), and an offence inside a crash prevention zone created under RCW 46.61.090 doubles the base penalty with no waiver, reduction or suspension available. Separately, RCW 46.61.673 makes driving dangerously distracted an infraction with a base penalty of thirty dollars, enforceable "only as a secondary action" once a driver has already been detained for another suspected infraction, which is how fiddling with a camera screen typically gets cited.

Audio is the part that catches Washington drivers out. RCW 9.73.030(1)(b) makes it unlawful to record a "Private conversation, by any device electronic or otherwise designed to record or transmit such conversation regardless how the device is powered or actuated without first obtaining the consent of all the persons engaged in the conversation." Washington is an all-party consent state, and a cabin-facing dash camera with the microphone live records passengers, and sometimes a person leaning into the window at the roadside. RCW 9.73.030(3) supplies the practical fix: consent is treated as obtained "whenever one party has announced to all other parties engaged in the communication or conversation, in any reasonably effective manner, that such communication or conversation is about to be recorded," and that announcement must itself be recorded. Announcing the recording at the start of each trip, on the recording, is the compliant habit. Turning the microphone off entirely removes the issue.

Obstructing the windshield is a traffic infraction. 110(8)(a) unless the court finds the driver indigent. 060 additionally lets any peace officer impound a vehicle found defective in equipment so as to be unsafe until the defect is corrected, at the owner's cost. 010(1) limits State Patrol inspection stations to commercial motor vehicles, school buses and private carrier buses, so the citation comes from a roadside stop. 060 gives the injured person a civil action for actual damages including mental pain and suffering, or liquidated damages at one hundred dollars a day for each day of violation up to one thousand dollars, plus a reasonable attorney's fee and costs of litigation.

030 inadmissible in any civil or criminal case in every Washington court of general or limited jurisdiction, subject to narrow exceptions, which is the opposite of what a dash camera is bought for.