How many of you wear your sunglasses while driving at night? What?
Nobody? (Well, nobody with more than 2 brain cells to rub together) What a
shocking answer. Now you wanna ask again why you can't tint your windshield?
C'mon guys this is pretty obvious.
Some R&D places are playing around with electro-tinting right now (applying
a current to an electro-reactive laminate) which would allow you to "dim" your
glass all the way around, but there would have to be some kind of checks to
prohibit use of the system in low light conditions.
These laws are not for the protection of the police officers. If your car
has heavy tinting or not, their lights blast enough light into the cab to see
what you are doing. If they can't see what you are doing, some departments
require them to either draw or loosen their firearms from/in their holsters
and/or call you out of the car. Departments that don't require this usually
train their officers to stand in the blind spot of the vehicle and call for
backup. They will usually wait till that backup arrives before approaching
the vehicle. Lazy Police officers who casually stride up to vehicles and
don't really care how it's decked out are usually the ones that end up being
shot.
Heavy tinting causes them to modify their tactics but is not the reasons
for the tinting laws. You may ask my brother for clairification on this, he's
a Deputy Sheriff in San Luis Obispo County and will be more than happy to
explain why cops are paranoid about approaching cars during traffic stops:
heavy tinting or not.
Shaun
Tustin, CA
-----original message-----
>>Here in NC you can have medium tint on side windows (60 or 70 %, I
>>think).
>>Nothing on windshield. The reason for this is simple: cops wanna SEE
>>who
>>they're walking up on. They wanna see where your hands are and what's
>>in
>>them. And I for one don't blame 'em. Scary thought coming up blind
>>on a
>>vehicle you've just pulled over these days!!
>>Gary
>>
>Yeah, that's the story I've always heard, too. But, think about it. Cops
>stop behind their prey, uh, victim and walk up from the back to the
>driver's side window. Boy, that untinted windshield sure was helpful!
>
Yeah, that's true. If anything, a darker windshield would reflect
like a mirror and help the officer to see down inside the car. My guess
is that you could look through the driver's side window, at the back of
the windshield, and you'd be looking right at the driver's lap which is
the most likely place for someone to be holding a gun...
My guess is that these laws are trying to increase visibility for
night driving. If I had limo tint all the way around, it would probably
be a little difficult to pick up the small details.
-Jon-
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:09:27 EDT