Is there a place to read all the traffic laws for your city and county, including the minor ones about your vehicle like lights and decals and all that?
If there isn’t, I am going to petition that it be a law that it be available to citizens.
I don’t know abut Va., but in California the state makes the traffic laws, and you can go down to the DMV and buy a copy of the motor vehicle code for just a few dollars.
Makes for very dry reading.
That would be a huge database. I have been able to find the statutes for every state that I have needed access, simply Google “state name” statutes. California is available here and they even have a search function. I was also able to find the statutes for the county I live in. Things such as lights and decals would be covered under state statutes. And most states defer to the NHTSA rules when it comes to vehicle lighting which is covered under Title 49, part 571, standard number 108 of the Federal Code.
A great place to start online for local ordinances is http://www.municode.com/resources/online_codes.asp. If you don’t find it there you can always search for “[city or county name] ordinances.” Of course not all municipalities have their ordinances online. Some you will have to call or visit to get your hands on the old-fashioned paper copy. Larger libraries in the state, especially law libraries or those with large law collections, will probably have a collection of municipal codes for the county or state.
The problem with most municipal ordinances is that they are not nicely codified like state laws. A city will pass Ordinance #1 dealing with trash collection, then Ordinance #2 dealing with parking, then Ordinance #3 dealing with fire protection. So it can be hard to find the ones about parking or traffic without a good index (in print) or someone putting in some metadata online.
That’s why it is good to check the site I referred to earlier. Online codes are usually pretty well organized. And that site is a well-organized index of online municipal codes. Falls Church, VA, for instance, has one.The traffic ordinances are organized under the heading, “Motor Vehicles and Traffic.”
The problem for those trying to locate traffic laws is that traffic law is frequently governed by local ordinances and state law. So you’d also have to look here to have a complete view of the traffic law of Falls Church.
Each state has vehicle and traffic laws, which are predominantly close to identical from state to state. (We regularly have discussions here about the exceptions, such as whether the left lane of a four-lane highway is for passing only.)
In general, and this is either universal or nearly so, the cities and counties are limited to regulating speed limits on city streets and secondary roads, establishing parking regulations, and the like, not the overall vehicular codes of the states.
Municipal codes frequently have surprises in them, though. Sometimes they mirror state law, and sometimes they have additional stuff. Some random examples: