Q: I have a question about vehicles driving around with large flags on wooden flag poles. I saw one on I-5 with three flags on wooden poles held in place with guy lines, driving 70 miles an hour in a big wind and rain storm. It seems dangerous – lines could break and the poles could fly into other vehicles or create debris on the road. Is this legal?
A: It sounds undignified, but the same law that applies to hauling a used futon to your dorm room after spotting it for free on the sidewalk also applies to flying our national symbol. Whatever you load in or on your vehicle, it’s your responsibility to properly secure your cargo. Here’s the rule: “No vehicle shall be driven or moved on any public highway unless such vehicle is so constructed or loaded as to prevent any of its load from dropping, sifting, leaking or otherwise escaping . . .”
I imagine nearly everyone hopes that whatever they’ve loaded in their car or truck doesn’t fall out before they get home, so maybe the problem isn’t exactly a disregard for the law but more of a failure to recognize the precarious nature of a poorly secured or unsecured load. Unfortunately, sometimes the first indicator that the cargo wasn’t secured right is a view of it in the rearview mirror. It’s bad enough if your belongings are smashed on the pavement, but the real threat is to the other folks on the road. Our current law, in which it’s a crime if you injure someone or cause damage to someone else’s property, was spurred on by a woman whose daughter was blinded and nearly killed when a piece of particle board flew out of a truck and through her windshield.
If you fly a flag in your truck it’s hard to know for sure if your flag setup can withstand the forces of freeway driving, and if you’re wrong the consequences can be grievous. It doesn’t help that the folks selling flag mounts don’t have much information on what speed their product can handle. Just because you can buy a product for your vehicle doesn’t mean it’s going to work; many of them are just intended for parades. At the very least, please don’t follow the advice of the guy on YouTube who recommends that you stick your wooden flagpole in a PVC pipe zip-tied to your truck bed.
Along with making sure the flag is secure, a couple other laws may come into play. For those hoping to fly the flag extra high, the maximum height of a vehicle or its load is fourteen feet. But unless you only travel at parade speed, your flag pole almost certainly won’t be able to handle it, so don’t go that high. And if your flag is so big that it covers your windshield or side windows, that’s a problem. The law says, and any reasonable person will agree, that those windows shall not be obstructed. If a flag is securely installed, not too tall, and doesn’t block the driver’s view, then yes, it is legal to fly.
As a matter of patriotism, if you’re flying our nation’s flag, there are some standards on how to respectfully display it. I’ll leave it to you to research proper respect of the flag and just say that if the flag is important enough to fly proudly, it’s important enough to fly properly – both for safety and for honor.
And finally, in the category of “The law wasn’t written for this:” On any vehicle with a load that extends more than four feet beyond its rear, the law requires a red or orange flag marking the extremity of the load. If you were to install a trailer hitch-mounted flag pole and fly five-foot-long flag, you’d technically have to attach a flag to the end of your flag (unless your original flag is all red or orange.)
There is a cause for discussion on whether or not that would legally be classified as a load of the flag hanging out behind the vehicle more than 4′.
Yep, like I mentioned, I don’t think there was any consideration about flying flags when the legislators wrote the law about loads that extend beyond the back of a vehicle. In that last paragraph I was just tring to find some humor in taking the law literally without consideration for the intent of the law.
Rather you ran through your neighborhood with a full sized American Flag each morning at 6:00am and in that way become in much better shape so you actually defend the USA in battle than drive around with a huge flag off the back of your pickup distracting other drivers and tattering Old Glory. Looks nice in a parade going 5mph, but since 9/11 it’s now flown muddied and worn out on the back of Firetrucks or seen whipping down the highway at 75mph getting all tattered and torn. Both examples of how Americans show disrespect for the Flag.