In Nevada, Snow Tires Will Not Satisfy the Chain Law over 10,000 Lb
Date Published
Most chain laws distinguish between vehicle classes by how many tires must be covered. Nevada's does something sharper. It changes which equipment counts at all.
The weight line
NAC 484D.235 applies when a street or highway is marked or posted with signs requiring traction devices, tire chains or snow tires. What the sign then demands depends on weight.
A motor vehicle or combination with a gross or combined gross weight of 10,000 lb or less may be equipped with traction devices, tire chains or snow tires. The driver chooses.
A motor vehicle or combination of more than 10,000 lb must be equipped with tire chains. Not traction devices generally, and not snow tires. Chains.
That is a narrower obligation than the sign wording suggests, and it is the detail most likely to be missed by a driver who reads the sign and assumes winter tires answer it.
Where the chains have to go
NAC 484D.240 sets the mounting. When a vehicle must be equipped, the chains must be installed on at least two driving wheels of the motor vehicle, and on at least two braking wheels of any trailing vehicle in a combination if that trailing vehicle is equipped or required to be equipped with brakes.
The trailer half of that is easy to overlook. A tractor with chains on the drives and nothing on a braked trailer does not meet the rule.
What counts as a chain
NAC 484D.220 requires that tire chains be made of metal or plastic and consist of two circular loops, one on each side of a tire, connected across the tread of the tire by not less than nine evenly spaced chains, cables or straps.
Nevada is unusual in permitting plastic in the construction standard. Washington's rule expressly rejects plastic chains. Equipment legal in one chain-law state is not automatically legal in the next.
The authority behind it
The regulation is adopted under NRS 481.051 and 484D.520. The statute grants the power and the administrative code sets the detail. That split is the normal pattern in the six states where the chain law is regulatory rather than statutory.