Is Flashing Your Lights To Warn Other Drivers Against The Law? It Depends!

Federal Judge Forces Missouri Town To Stop Ticketing Drivers Who Flash Their Lights To Warn Of Speed Traps

April 9, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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Last summer, we told you about a Missouri man who, with the help of the ACLU, was fighting against one municipality’s effort to prosecute motorists who flash their headlights to alert other drivers to the presence of speed traps. Last week, Michael Elli – and everyone else who drives through the town of Ellisville, Mo. – won.

A U.S. district judge issued a permanent injunction against Ellisville last Wednesday barring law enforcement from “detaining, seizing, citing, or prosecuting any individual within the City of Ellisville for communicating by flashing his or her automobile headlamps.”

Judge Edward Autrey based his injunction, in part, on the 1^st Amendment, having issued a preliminary order in February in which he noted that “the expressive conduct at issue sends a message to bring one’s driving in conformity with the law—whether it be by slowing down, turning on one’s own headlamps at dusk or in the rain, or proceeding with caution.”

Autrey had issued that temporary order in spite of the fact that local officials pledged not to continue ticketing drivers for flashing their headlights, if only the judge would let the local law stand. He issued the injunction anyway.

Although the ruling represents a decisive victory for 1^st Amendment advocates who regard signaled communication as speech, the fact remains that different States treat the practice differently. As Reason observed in its report Wednesday, flashing one’s headlights to “warn other motorists of speed traps remains subject to a hodgepodge of laws across the United States—protected in some places, forbidden in others, and punished by cops under creative interpretations of local rules in many jurisdictions.