Is the windshield factory-tinted?

[Moncha]

As a first hand referee.. Your cop buddy is full of it.. He can't just administer a ticket because he thinks your window is tinted.. He'd have to prove it, then issue the citation.. Go to court and have the ticket purged..

[Corey872]

Unfortunately, as a sworn official, the cops word will be golden...I don't think he will have to "prove" anything. Just like a speeding ticket, the cop will say "I paced him going XX MPH or the radar said XX" Sure, you could call his credentials into question, but in the end it's just his word saying "I saw this" and that is good enough. He can just show up, say "It was tinted" and the ball is in your court...guilty until proven innocent.

Best case scenario is you probably take a day off work, go to a tinting shop, have them look at it and write a ticket (or better yet a sworn affidavit) saying there is no tint on the front windshield, then take another day off work and go to court, plead not guilty and get a trial date set, then take another day off and go to trial (hope the cop actually shows up, or the judge may decide to continue the case to a later date). Hopefully the judge is sympathetic and rules in your favor.

So, you do all this running around, extra gas, time off work, etc and hopefully you will beat the ticket! It's great in principle, and it would be even better to see the cop on the way out and tell him "Thanks for nuthin' Di@%"

The flip side of the coin is that it is probably a sub $100 ticket? and most likely not a moving violation, so no points on the license, no insurance worries, etc. You'll have to weigh all your running around versus just doing as the man wants..."Pay up sucker!"

Definitely let us know how it goes, though!

PS - for the record, my 99 has a very slight green tint to the windshield and a slightly darker band about 3-4" down from the top. But the dealer said it was replaced when I bought my truck, so it is aftermarket.

Corey

[Moncha]

Very true Corey but, as another patrol officer, I hate to see these kind of things, as it give all of us a bad rap.. As a non moving violation and being equipment related, (At least in Colorado) the cop's word is not enough and the final statement.. If the subject can bring in a letter(s) from verified businesses stating there is nothing wrong with the window, the judge would/will most likely throw the whole thing out. Using the excuse of "registration sticker does not appear to be white" is just piss poor probable cause for the stop and around here would only be considered a secondary charge as it would not hold up as a primary..
If the officers in his neck of the woods have time and energy to flag down that kind of a "offense", then heven help New Yorkers.. Don't even let a bug stike the window as you may be pulled over for obstructed vision..
(This opinon of course, is based on a one sided story and we all know there are at least two sides)

[Narsus]

Seems to me that a "non-white" emissions sticker could very reasonably be caused by sunlight as well as front window tint. Also, my first (stock) windshield didn't have any tint on it at all, just the dots, like you say. The side windows were tinted, which is NOT standard, I guess. Or at least that's what they told me when I took it into the isuzu dealership when they wouldn't fix the peeling tint.

Incidentally, I'm on my 2nd window now (2 windshields in 4 years is actually pretty good for Colorado), and there's a 6 inch tinted stripe across the top. It sucks... Going down hills and such, it might as well be nighttime

[AlaskaVX]

Fight, Fight, Fight, 'cus You Are Right!

[Sheik-YurBooty]

In NYC , the law is that the tint factor cannot be below 30...Plus in order to get a ticket the cop must place a meter on the window to determine the factor

[kpaske]

I can only speak from my experience in MD, and I'm sure it works differently from state to state, but there a cop needs no "proof" whatsoever to write you what they call a "repair order", which is what you would get for improper tint on your vehicle. In fact, the cop can write you a ticket for whatever he wants, and then the burden is on you to have your vehicle reinspected to satisfy the conditions of the order. In some cases you need to go to an authorized inspection station and in others, such as with tint, you need to be inspected by the state police at the MVA headquarters. In fact, the cop can be completely ignorant of the law and write you a ticket just because he "thinks" you're wrong. In my case, I was written a ticket for improper tint on the back window of a pickup truck. The law puts no limitation on any tint behind the driver and passenger, so having limo black tint from the passenger windows back is 100% legal (or at least that's how it was 10 years ago when I got my ticket). So because one cop was mistaken , about how the law was written, it was my responsibility to prove my innocence by taking a half day off work to drive up to the MVA headquarters and get reinspected.

As far as factory tinting goes... Perhaps it was different from year to year? I know that my stock '99 windshield had some sort of tint or filtering from the day I bought it. It's not apparent when looked at with the naked eye, but whenever I wear sunglasses there is a distinct greenish-purple "checkerboard"-like pattern across the whole windshield.