I’d just like to thank everyone for their comments. I hadn’t realised the offence was the more general one of obstructed driver’s view.
We have traffic offences of obstructed view as well in Canada, but I’ve never heard of it being used in relation to an air freshener.
Apart from the unfortunately obvious reasons, why might ‘obstruction’ not apply to a law enforcement vehicle? What do they expect might be reasonably obstructing the windshield?
The electronic toll tags such as ezpass is technically illegal under some such state laws, or at least used to be.
Most of the laws I’ve looked at have either had an explicit exemption for toll collection and GPS systems and /or have written the law so the place where those items are normally attached wouldn’t be included.
The problem is, if you are driving along with a completely legal air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror, can a cop still pull you over, argue that he saw you had SOME KIND of obstruction but wanted to determine if it was legal or not, then start fishing in your car?
Those were/are reactive laws, they strongly indicate they were illegal till the law as changed to allow them (or else no need for such a law)
Radar/laser speed detector, display for said speed detector showing the speed of the vehicle being measured, operating handle for the searchlight mounted on the window pillar, and maybe the top of the screen for the laptop that’s usually mounted on the center console.
As far as I can tell, in the places with those laws, there’s no such thing as a " completely legal air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror" - the law are either written to specifically allow toll collection devices and/or GPS systems or the law specifies where devices can be mounted, for example as close to the bottom of the windshield as possible or behind and slightly above the rear view mirror but I haven’t seen one that allows anything hanging from the rear-view mirror.
Whether you can be pulled over for a obstruction depends on the state- in some places it’s a secondary offense, which means you (theoretically) can’t be pulled over for it but you can get a ticket if you are pulled over for some other reason such as speeding.
I don’t know. I can think of a handful of things, but @engineer_comp_geek 's answer is better than I would have come up with. (I don’t think I know what the “unfortunately obvious” reason is).
It’s also going to be true that the equipment on emergency vehicles is going to be governed by other policies and regulations – and, for that matter, the driver may have little say in how the vehicle is equipped.
I do think it’s interesting that while the “no object” between driver and windshield provision does not apply to law enforcement or other emergency vehicles, the “no signs” provision only exempts law enforcement.
Daunte Wright was pulled over because of expired license tabs, not the air freshener as is so often reported by the news.
And then there’s Mountain View, CO. A 9Wants to Know investigation reveals a tiny town in the Denver metro area dishes out more “obstructed view” citations than Denver, Aurora and Boulder combined.
The town, which is only 12 square blocks, is located just south of Lakeside and west of Denver. Drivers are often oblivious to the town’s existence until they get pulled over for things like cracked windshields or air fresheners hanging on rearview mirrors.
A review of records obtained by 9NEWS show Mountain View’s police issued nearly 900 obstructed view citations in 2013.
The town’s “obstructed view” traffic code is broadly interpreted by police and its judge to not only include windshield cracks, but anything hanging from a rearview mirror.
Copyright can be criminal in some circumstances. There was apparently a consultant going around advising on when this can be invoked. I.e. if the police see a large-ish number of burned CD’s in the car through the window, then it’s possible (probable cause?) the occupant is involved in commercial sale of copyright materials (same logic as larger quantity of narcotics indicates trafficking). This could provide reasonable suspicion of a crime, grounds for a search without consent - and creating a pretext to search the car is the whole point of this exercise.
In the case that described this (IIRC, on TechDirt which often discusses copyright issues), the officer then found a firearm under the seat, and the appeal court tossed out the search - and so the firearm charge - as invalid. Note any pretext to search, often less affluent people on longer distance trips, will yield the traveler’s cash reserves (since they don’t have credit cards) and so this becomes money forfeit under suspicion it is drug money. Civil forfeiture does not require any charges, or any proof - unless a person can afford a lawyer who will cost more than the amount seized, in order to contest the seizure in court. On a good day the police may find something that justifies seizing the car too.
What you describe sounds much more like a highwayman than a highway patrol officer.
I guess a major issue for drivers is not knowing what exactly will trigger a cop to pull you over. And this changes depending on where you are.
Examples:
I went for 20+ years living on the west coast, having been pulled over exactly once for actually speeding (but I got off with a warning because I said I was sorry). Then, in West Lafayette, Indiana, I got pulled over THREE TIMES within 18 months. Why? The local cops were using whatever excuse they could to stop people, question them and look into their vehicles. I believe the reason I was targeted was because for a while I was driving a black Land Rover. When I switched to a small blue Subaru, they stopped bothering me. So, what were the offenses? #1: Had a license plate light burned out (one of two). And it was nighttime. They actually asked me if I was an Uber driver because of my GPS mounted to the dash (answer: no) #2: They said I failed to signal when changing lanes. Well, actually, I did but perhaps didn’t leave it on long enough. #3: I can’t even remember, but I note that they for sure had been reviewing the fact that I had been pulled over previously, with interest. Jeez.
I believe I heard from my spouse, who closely follows the local news, that the cops stopped doing these “random” stops when the community (or maybe an angry ex-chief of police or something) finally got fed up with being pulled over so much. This seems to have happened about the time I switched vehicles, so I dunno.
Meanwhile, in the mid 1990’s when I worked in Silicon Valley, I noticed that if you had the right “look” and drove a nice-looking car, you could go as fast as you wanted on the I-280 and not get pulled over. The cops would park on the shoulder and shout through a megaphone for everyone to slow down. Pretty funny. The only cars I saw pulled over were old beaters.