Arkansas Vehicle Light Laws: Colors, Underglow, and Fines

Arkansas vehicle light laws, set out in Title 27, Chapter 36 of the Arkansas Code, require every car on the road to carry working tail lamps, a lit rear license plate, and rear reflectors; they ban red, blue, or green light showing from the front of a non-emergency vehicle; they cap most auxiliary lamps at 300 candlepower; and they forbid flashing lights except in a short list of situations. Fines start at $10 for routine violations and climb to $2,500 for running a blue light.

Lighting Equipment Your Vehicle Must Have

Every motor vehicle, trailer, and semitrailer on an Arkansas highway needs tail lamps. Vehicles registered in Arkansas and built after June 11, 1959, must have at least two, mounted as far apart as practical, at the same height, between 20 and 72 inches off the ground. Each must show red light visible from 500 feet behind.¹

Your rear license plate needs its own white light bright enough to make the plate legible from 50 feet. Any other color of light around the plate is a violation, and so is white light bright enough to wash the plate out. New motor vehicles other than truck tractors must also carry two red rear reflectors, mounted between 20 and 60 inches high and visible from 100 to 350 feet when hit by oncoming headlamp beams.¹

Ornamental LED lights on the front of a vehicle are capped at two, and they must be white.²

When You Have To Turn Your Lights On

Lamps must be lit from half an hour after sunset until half an hour before sunrise. They must also be on any time visibility drops below 500 feet, so fog, heavy rain, and dust storms all trigger the rule regardless of the clock.³

Arkansas also requires headlights whenever your windshield wipers are running because of precipitation. There’s a wrinkle: the wipers-and-headlights rule is a secondary offense, so an officer cannot pull you over for it alone. If you’re stopped for another reason and your wipers were on without your headlights, the maximum fine is $25 with no court costs, and the statute builds in a $5 reduction if you were already in compliance when stopped.³

Motorcycles and motor-driven cycles run under a stricter rule. Their lamps must be on at all times whenever the vehicle is on a street or highway, day or night.³

Prohibited Colors and Brightness

No red, blue, or green light may be visible from directly in front of the center of any vehicle, with a narrow exception for vehicles specifically authorized elsewhere in the lighting subchapter to display a red front-facing light. The point is to keep private vehicles from being mistaken for police cars, ambulances, or fire trucks. Blue gets its own, much harsher penalty tier.⁴

Any lamp on your vehicle that isn’t a headlamp, spot lamp, auxiliary lamp, turn signal, or authorized warning lamp must stay below 300 candlepower. If it exceeds that, it has to be aimed so the bright portion of the beam doesn’t hit the road surface more than 75 feet ahead. That rule is what keeps aftermarket work lights and off-road lamps from blinding oncoming drivers.⁴

Flashing Lights

Flashing lights are prohibited on any vehicle unless the situation appears in the statute’s short list. Permitted uses are:

Authorized emergency vehicles such as police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.
School buses using alternating red warning lights when loading or unloading children.⁵
Funeral processions, where escort vehicles must display purple flashing, rotating, or oscillating lights and other procession vehicles may do the same. Purple lights are only allowed during an actual procession.⁶
Turn signals.
Hazard flashers used to warn other drivers when your vehicle poses an unusual danger, like being stopped on a shoulder or moving well below the speed of traffic.
Roadway construction and maintenance vehicles, added by Act 209 of 2025.⁷

Outside those situations, rotating or flashing lights on a vehicle are unlawful. A separate emergency-light statute reinforces this by prohibiting any red, green, or amber rotating or flashing light on a vehicle unless the Code specifically allows it.⁸

Underglow, LED Light Bars, and Plate Frames

Arkansas has no standalone statute banning underglow or neon lighting, but the general rules do the work. The 300-candlepower ceiling, the front-facing ban on red, blue, and green, and the flashing-light prohibition all apply to underglow kits. Any strobing or pulsing mode is out. White or amber underglow that stays below the brightness threshold and doesn’t flash is the safer setup, and even then the light should be aimed so the beam doesn’t strike the roadway beyond 75 feet ahead.⁴

LED light bars aren’t named in the statute but fall under the same general lamp rules. A bar that exceeds 300 candlepower has to be aimed so its beam doesn’t reach the road more than 75 feet ahead, which is nearly impossible while the bar is actively lighting the road. In practice, aftermarket light bars should be covered or off on public highways.

Plate frames with colored LEDs run into the tail-lamp statute. No color other than white is allowed around the rear plate, and the white light can’t be so bright it makes the plate illegible from 50 feet.¹

The Move-Over Law

When you approach a vehicle stopped on the highway showing flashing, revolving, or rotating lights in blue, red, amber, white, or green, you must change lanes if it’s safe or slow down. It covers police and emergency responders, Arkansas Department of Transportation vehicles, utility trucks, ARDOT contractor vehicles, and tow trucks.⁹

Fines and Enforcement

Penalties are tiered, and the gap between tiers is large.

Blue light is the top tier. Installing, activating, or operating a blue light on any vehicle, or even possessing an unsealed blue light in or on a vehicle, is a Class A misdemeanor carrying a maximum fine of $2,500.⁸¹⁰

Other violations of the lighting subchapter, including missing tail lamps, improper color displays, unauthorized flashing lights, and exceeding the candlepower limit, are general misdemeanors with fines from $10 to $100 per offense.⁸

The wipers-and-headlights rule sits by itself: up to $25, no court costs, secondary enforcement only.³

Arkansas ended mandatory vehicle safety inspections in 1997, so nothing catches a burnt-out tail lamp or a missing reflector before an officer does. Keeping your lighting in working order is on you.

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-215 – Tail Lamps and Reflectors
2
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-214 – Spot Lamps, Fog Lamps
3
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-204 – When Lighted Lamps Required
4
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-208 – Special Restrictions on Lamps
5
Arkansas Department of Public Safety. Arkansas Code 27-51-1004 – Passing When Stopped Prohibited
6
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-306 – Funeral Processions
7
Arkansas State Legislature. Arkansas House Bill 1475 – 95th General Assembly
8
Justia. Arkansas Code 27-36-301 – Violations
9
Arkansas Highway Safety Office. Arkansas Code Title 27 – Passing Authorized Vehicle Stopped on Highway
10
Justia. Arkansas Code 5-4-201 – Fines – Limitations on Amount