THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 14, 1994 TAG: 9412130120
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Thomas Payne found out the hard way Friday that what is legal in one state isn't necessarily so in another.
Payne, a 36-year-old maintenance man for Montgomery Ward & Co. in Virginia Beach, lives on the North Carolina side of Knotts Island, near the southern tip of the city.
He and his wife commute to the city each weekday to go to work and, in the course of driving, use the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway to reach their separate jobs.
On Friday morning, as Payne dropped his quarter in the basket at the toll plaza, he was pulled over by a state trooper and handed a ticket for having tinted glass in his 1993 Ford pickup that exceeded the acceptable legal limit in Virginia.
Payne's truck is registered in North Carolina, although it was purchased in Virginia Beach, but the windows were tinted in Nags Head, N.C., for $64 and met the legal limits in North Carolina. Payne said he ordered the tinting to protect the trucks's interior and upholstery from the sun.
``I even have stickers on the windows to prove it's legal,'' he said Friday morning shortly after being handed a citation that will require him to pay a $46 fine, - if he decides not to contest the matter.
As of now, Payne has decided not to contest it. ``What can I do?'' he shrugged. ``I have to pay. I make a hundred and some dollars a day and if I take the day off to go to court I'm going to lose out anyway. So, I might as well pay.''
Payne unwittingly drove into one the random check points set up by the Virginia State Police on the Expressway and at Expressway toll basket exits. The procedure invariably results in ticketing for any number of state motor vehicle code violations, from expired inspection stickers and operators licenses to illegal and/or defective equipment.
``They were pulling people over left and right,'' said Payne. ``When they pulled me over the trooper stuck some kind of machine in the truck to measure the light.''
What apparently happened said Tammy Van Dame, local State Police spokesperson, is that the troopers meter revealed that the tinting on Payne's truck windows exceeded a state limit of 37 percent.
``Thirty-seven percent light transmittance or below is illegal,'' she said, adding, ``Tinted windows are a huge danger to the police, especially at night. They can't see into the car.''
Payne said the trooper who stopped him said as much, and he acknowledged the practicality of the law. He did, however, question why the law varied so much from state to state and could so easily entrap unwary motorists.
``I didn't realize I had to comply with Virginia rules when my vehicle is registered in North Carolina,'' he said.
``This is something people should be aware from state to state,'' said Van Dame. ``Vehicles just passing through are not likely to be summonsed - if they're like tourists and such.''
However, interstate motorists who travel the same routes regularly are not accorded the same leeway by Virginia troopers. ``You have to be aware when you drive over those roads,'' she said. ``You have to be aware of the differences in the laws.''
Payne said he wanted to go public with his case to inform other motorists of the pitfalls of interstate travel. ``What I'm trying to do is let everybody know what's going on, so they don't get in trouble like I did,'' he said. He said he plans to have the tint stripped from his windows, because he still has to drive to Virginia Beach every day to go to work. by CNB