WA light bar laws can be a pain to navigate. In 2015, LED light bars saw a huge increase in popularity thanks to improving technology and prices reducing drastically due to online sellers such as the 4WD SupaCentre.

The West Australian Government’s response to us all having a lot of fun was the controversial change to laws surrounding the placement and fitting of light bars. Previously, laws in Western Australia were based around the idea that spotlights would always be fitted as a pair, and light bars being a new concept were in somewhat of a legal grey area.

Australian Design Rule 13/00 (ADR13) is the new law covering additional driving lights and is described as bringing WA in line with international standards and improving pedestrian and driver safety. Many say that it’s just another instance of WA being a nanny state and while it’s hard to argue with that, let’s get right into how to mount your light bar legally in WA.

The “General Requirements” are described as so:
Any additional driving lights fitted to a vehicle must be designed and securely fitted in a way that:

• minimises the likelihood of injury to a person making contact with the vehicle in an unfortunate event of a crash with a pedestrian;
• does not obstruct the driver?s view of the road and traffic to the front or side of the vehicle;
• the light emitted does not cause discomfort to the driver either directly or indirectly through devices for indirect vision and/or other reflecting surfaces of the vehicle; and
• must remain switched off when high beam headlights are not in operation; and
• must automatically switch off when high beam headlights are either turned off or the headlamps are dipped

There’s then a whole lot of jargon type specific details that we’ll break down into the following basic rules that cover all installations, the ones specific to single light bar installations, and those only for dual light bar installation.

This post was written in June 2019, based off the Western Australian State Government’s IB -132C Vehicle Safety and Standards Information Bulletin and is a rough guide only.

WA Light Bar Laws for All Additional Lights

• Lights must emit white light only.
• A maximum of four additional lights can be fitted.
• The driver must be able to see everything from 11 metres onward, in front of the car.
  • The seat must be in the rear-most position when assessing this.
• The top of the light bar, must be lower than the edge of the bonnet.
• Mounting hardware must not present a risk of injury to a pedestrian. It should be mounted in such a way that it does not protrude. Of course, that’s going to be the least of their worries if they collide with your bull bar, but it is the requirement.
• The light bar must be installed horizontally.
• The light bar must automatically turn off when high beams are turned off/dipped.
• All additional lights must be forward facing. The law describes it as having to be facing in the vehicles propulsion direction, so let’s assume that only people who can go over 100 in reverse, get to have lights facing the rear.
• The light bar must operate in conjunction with the standard head lights and not be operated independently.
• Indicators and parking lights must not be obstructed.
• When installed in a bull bar, the light bar/s must be located in such a way that it does not protrude as an object that was cause injury to a pedestrian. I.e. it can not be on top of the bull bar and would typically be located directly under the horizontal top bar, between the two vertical supports, as seen in the below picture.

WA Light Bar Laws for Single Light Bar Installations

In addition to all the above, single light bars must also meet the following criteria:

• They must be mounted in the centre of the car, so that it is symmetrical around the centre line of the car. I.e. it can not be to one side.

Western Australian Light Bar Laws for Multiple Light Bar Installations

The requirements here are simple and similar to the above instructions for single light bars.

• They must be mounted symmetrically, so that they are equidistant from the centreline of the car. You can see multiple iterations in the above image.

So there you have it, there’s a break down of WA’s Light Bar laws, explaining the legal way to mount them.

Once you’ve decided where to mount your light bar, we’d be only too happy to discuss helping you wire it up so that it’s compliant and works properly.