Good visibility is an aspect crucial for road safety. In case of having a dirty car, we may not get all the necessary visual references, which puts us and the rest of the drivers on the road at risk as they are more likely to have an accident.
clean car or fine
When we drive, 90% of the information we receive when we are behind the wheel comes through the vehicle’s windows and our eyes. Have the dirty car It can go against obtaining all this information necessary to drive with guarantees and it is collected as a penalty. It also influences the fact that the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that incorporate some models work thanks to the cameras that are usually located behind the front window. If both this and the rear are dirty, we will not be able to drive safely.
As stated in the Article 19.1 of the General Traffic Regulations: “The glazed surface of the vehicle must allow, in any case, the clear visibility of the driver over the entire road on which it circulates without interference from sheets or adhesives”.
If the traffic officers stop you and you carry the dirty windshield, you’re going to get fined. It shouldn’t happen in normal cases where there’s barely a few marks from yesterday’s rain, but there’s usually something slouch about it.
Another element for which you can be fined in case of excessive dirt has to do with the license plate. This is an identifying element that always has to be perfectly legible. If the layer of dirt prevents knowing partially or totally what are the numbers and letters of your license plate, it could lead to a sanction.
Penalties of up to 200 euros per dirty car
Las sanctions that punish excessive dirt that some vehicles accumulate, either due to lack of maintenance or cleanliness or due to natural climatic phenomena such as haze, have a range of fines.
If the front and rear windows are so dirty that it prevents the driver from seeing clearly and correctly, the agents could fine you 80 euros. If in addition to this there is an aggravating circumstance that the level of dirt compromises road safety we will be talking about a serious infraction that will be punished with up to 200 euros.
Other fines related to cleaning are, for example, not carrying functional windshield wipers or having them in a deteriorated state, which could not clean the rain that falls and would leave us in low visibility conditions. In the worst case, the vehicle could be immobilized if it presents “deficiencies that constitute a particularly serious risk to road safety”, as reflected in Article 84 of the Road Safety Law.
As we said before, if the dirt accumulated on the license plate prevents its correct reading, avoiding vehicle identification by an agent or electronic devices of the Directorate General of Traffic, is a serious offense that is punishable by a financial fine of 200 euros.
