Window Tinting Laws in Washington State

Questions Race Back and Forth - Legal or Illegal?

Over the years people grew fond of tinted windows on their cars for one reason or another. The main reason naturally is, to block the sun and make it easier for the driver to see outside in the day time. But what about driving at night with the tinted windows? 

Many people think that tint on car windows should be illegal, or at least don’t have such dark tint for your cars. 

And there is also a kind of tint for your car windows that looks silver, in my opinion it looks like a mirror, and there is no way that someone on the outside can see the person on the inside. 

The main controversy here is, Safety… 

Driving at night with tinted windows not only jeopardizes the viewing efficiency of the drivers being able to see clearly out of their windows, it also jeopardizes civilians in other vehicles, for instance; what if you were a cop, pulling someone over for speeding or for some other reason, and they had the ‘mirror tint’ on their car windows, the cop would not be able to see inside that car so the person in the car could have a gun pointed directly at the cops head, and the cop would never see it coming…
Another scenario; what if you had a child who was walking home from school, and someone had a car with really dark tint on their windows, the car pulls over and picks your child up, your child could be screaming and waving and no one would be able to see that there is a child in the back of that car that needs help. 

There are so many good reasons that window tinting should not be legal, and what, two reasons why people love it: ‘The looks of the tint, and/or, to block the sun in the daytime.’ But for your reason to be ‘to block the sun in the daytime’ really isn’t a good reason, blocking the sun in the daytime is for sunglasses, and at night you take the sunglasses off, but if you have dark tint on your car windows, you can’t just “take it off” at night when you don’t need it anymore. Driving a car with dark tint is like wearing your sunglasses at night, it makes everything three times as dark as it really is outside.