Do you live in hot weather parts of India and own a car? If yes, then most of you must have sun-films or semi-transparent films installed on the Windows of your car to keep the sunlight form entering your car this keeping it somewhat cool. So far, in most Indian states, sun-films with 70% visual light transmission (VLT) were allowed on front and rear windshields of the cars while films with 50% or more VLT were allowed on the side windows of the cars, but as per a recent judgment by the Supreme Court of India, the use of any kind of after-market sun films is not permissible as per law.
The decision of the court has come in the wake of a litigation filed against the use of sun films in criminal cases where the sun films were misused by criminals to hide behind the dark films while they did various crimes on roads including serious crimes like rape. The recent ban on the use of sun-films has created a drive by various state’s police implementing the same in their region by stopping the vehicles and fining them, removing the sun-films on the spot. Police is also spreading information to people to get it removed themselves to avoid fines and impounding of driving license or vehicle itself.
image – Sun Films Banned In India
The summer heat in India is quite intense especially in the mid-north of the country with the temperatures reaching close to 45 degree Celsius, enough to make one completely drenched in sweat! Sun films did provide some respite by rejecting a part of the heat coming into the car through the glass windows. Without the sun-films, the heat entering the car will become higher and will put more load on the car air-conditioning. With most of the new cars in India being equipped with air-conditioning, Sun control films have been hugely popular with the car buyers especially in the hot regions, but all that has change. Maybe in future there will be some invention which can help save passengers inside cars from intense sunlight !
One interesting part of the Supreme court’s decision though is that it does not prohibit the use of tint on the glasses of the car which is factory fitted. The rationale given behind this is that there maybe some tint in the materials used to laminate the car glass for safety purpose, however, such tint also has to be under the permissible 70% and 50% VLT limits for windshields and side windows respectively. We hope that car manufacturers will come out with some solution like materials which can be coated onto the glasses which helps keep the heat out without hurting the VLT of the glass, as its rightly said, necessity is the mother of invention, we hope to see some inventions to keep the cars cool soon.
