Author: almaha

Have you ever wonder whether driving while wearing headphones is legal? Or if you can drive barefoot?. All these questions and more can be answered through an interactive visualization platform called “Is it illegal to Drive ..?“. The platform uses a nice map to provide the answer to the most-Googled questions about driving laws in the US. It is developed by Just Park to show the inconsistencies in U.S. driving laws.

The platform lets you click on an animated map of the United States with bubbles for each state. As the headline question changes, the bubbles change color to show whether an action is legal (green), inadvisable (yellow), or illegal (red.)

Inadvisable activities can possibly get you in trouble, depending on the discretion of a traffic officer. My advice is if you see anything not green, just avoid doing it. That includes, for example, driving while tired or barefoot.

Also, one of the most surprising facts in this mini-site, that driving your car with a beer in your hand will not get you cited as long as you are under the legal limit in Mississippi. You can find several interesting driving facts on the platform, and if you want to fact-check the numbers, there is a Google Docs spreadsheet with all the sources.

In the US, finding driving laws is not simple, since it depends on in which state you are in. The goal of this interactive platform is to speed up the process of finding answers by visualizing what is against the law and what isn’t in each state. In that way, people can find their answers and gain more knowledge about the driving laws in general in the US. This platform is intended for a broad range of people, so the use of interactive visualization is an efficient way to enforce laws. Also, it encourages people to know their rights without having them to read endless documents.

In the end, stay away from New Jersey, unless you want to speed past a funeral procession while wearing headphones, and with a missing front bumper car.