Most of the time I don't hassle people about their tint unless it's the real dark limo tint. At that point it becomes a driver's safety issue and an officer safety issue. Sometimes, with the real dark tint, people can't see their rear view mirrors at night. Hmmm...that might be a problem. I don't think I need to explain the officer safety issue.

Here's the bottom line. Tinted windows is probable cause for a stop. Sometimes that can lead to finding other things: DUI, drugs, suspended D/L..... I stopped a guy last month for tinted windows. Of course he gave me the song and dance that he was some sort of skin therapist and he had some skin condition that required him to have tinted windows on his car because of the damaging effects of the sun, and of course he did not have a doctor's note. While I don't question that the sun can have damaging effects, the fact that he just came from playing soccer on a day that was 95 degrees kinda blew his reason for needing tinted windows. So now the red flags are going up in my head. I run out his driver's license and wouldn't you know it, he's suspended for failure to appear. Here's the kicker, he had 2 FTA's for none other than 26708(a) VC- Tinted windows. Normally tinted windows is a correctible violation, but in this guy's case I made it non-correctible because obviously he has a problem. The court can make it non-correctible as well if you keep getting cited for it even if you get it fixed and signed off.

The moral of the story: I don't mind the tint unless it's real dark and if you are a sh*t head, don't give us a reason to pull you over.

 

That's pretty fair, IMO. If I were a police officer, I would definately mind not seeing into a vehicle, for obvious reasons. At the same time, I would not appreciate being pulled over as the tint being the only reason.

I think a happy compromise can be had here. If I'm pulled over in MD with 20% tint (which I like for many reasons, including 95-100 degree days in the summer), I would hope the officer would send me on my way if no other problems are found. If I had other issues on that stop, then shame on me.

Here in MD, the officers are pretty tolerant of tint beyond the legal limit (35%). I think as long as it doesn't interfere with their jobs, they're ok with it. And that's an attitude we're all happy with