Wyoming Window Tint: 28% Front and Rear, 20% Reflectance Cap, No Inspection Lane

The controlling provision is W.S. 31-5-962, headed "Sunscreening devices," in the equipment article of Wyoming's traffic act. Subsection (b) frames the duty around the driver rather than the installer: no person may operate an enclosed motor vehicle that is registered or required to be registered in Wyoming on any public highway, road or street with sunscreening on the windshield, the front side wings, the side windows adjacent to the driver, or the windows behind the driver that fail the section. A non-resident driving through on out-of-state plates is outside subsection (b) by its own terms, because the vehicle is neither registered nor required to be registered here.

Wyoming does not split its numbers front and rear the way most states do. Subsection (d) requires the side wings and side windows at the immediate right and left of the driver to be nonreflective with total light transmission through film and glazing together of not less than twenty-eight percent. Subsection (e) applies the identical twenty-eight percent floor to the side windows behind the driver and the rearmost window. The measurement is of the assembly, film plus factory glass, not of the film alone, so a 30% film over glass that already blocks light will fail.

The windshield rule in subsection (c) is a placement rule, not a percentage. Windshield film must be nonreflective, may not be red, yellow or amber, and may be used only along the top, where it may not extend below the AS-1 line or more than five inches from the top of the windshield, whichever of the two is closer to the top. Subsection (f) adds a mirror-finish ceiling that applies to every window: no sunscreening device or tinting film with a luminous reflectance of light exceeding twenty percent may be applied or affixed. Subsection (a)(iii) defines luminous reflectance as the ratio of light reflected outward to light falling on the material, and subsection (a)(v) defines nonreflective as designed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

Two consequential carve-outs sit in subsections (g) and (h). Under (g), if any film is added to windows behind the operator, the vehicle must carry one left and one right outside rearview mirror. Under (h), the section simply does not reach the windows behind the driver of trucks, buses, motor homes, ambulances, limousines and multipurpose passenger vehicles, nor the windshields of motorcycles and motor-driven cycles. A multipurpose passenger vehicle is defined in subsection (a)(iv) as one designed to carry ten persons or fewer built on a truck chassis or with special features for occasional off-road operation, which takes most pickups and SUVs out of the rear-window rule entirely. Subsection (n) pulls multipurpose vehicles as defined in W.S. 31-1-101(a)(xv)(M) back in when they have a windshield and an enclosed cab.

A 1996 grandfather clause survives in subsection (j). Film applied before July 1, 1996 to the front side wings, the side windows behind the driver or the rearmost window is judged against thirteen percent rather than twenty-eight percent, provided it is nonreflective. Subsection (h) sets the cut-off for everything else: pre-July 1996 film that met no specification was in violation after December 31, 1996.

The medical route in subsection (m) is the only path to darker glass on a normal passenger car. A vehicle operated by or regularly used to transport a person whose medical condition makes them susceptible to harm from sunlight or bright artificial light may be tinted to a twenty-five percent floor on the windshield and any or all windows, except that windshield transmittance may not fall below seventy percent apart from the upper five inches or the AS-1 line. The driver or an occupant must carry a certificate issued by the director, and the director issues it only on a signed statement from a licensed physician or licensed optometrist saying the film is necessary to safeguard that person's health. The certificate lasts as long as the condition persists or until the vehicle is sold, whichever comes first, and the director may issue more than one certificate to an individual or a family.

Subsection (k) reaches the installer: no person or firm may apply or affix film to the windows of any motor vehicle in this state that does not comply with the section. Notably, subsection (a)(i) defines dealer as a person or business distributing or installing sunscreening products, but the operative ban in (k) is written against any person or firm, so a friend doing the work in a driveway is covered on the same terms as a shop.

Tint offences are enforced at the roadside. S. S. 31-5-102(a)(l) as the director of the Department of Transportation, only a purchase-and-test and injunction power aimed at sellers of unapproved equipment. So there is no lane where a meter is applied on a schedule, and the 28% figure is tested only when a trooper, sheriff's deputy or municipal officer stops the car. S. 31-5-901(a) makes it a misdemeanour to drive, or for the owner to knowingly permit to be driven, a vehicle equipped in any manner in violation of the act, which puts the registered owner on the hook alongside the driver.

S. 31-5-1201(b) supplies the ladder: a fine of not more than $200 for a first conviction, not more than $300 for a second conviction of the same offence within one year, and not more than $500 or up to six months in jail, or both, for a third or subsequent conviction of the same offence within one year of the first. S. 31-5-1201(c) the prior convictions are kept out of the trial itself and introduced only afterwards for sentencing. A shop that applies illegal film violates subsection (k) independently of anything the driver does, and that violation carries the same 31-5-1201 ladder.