Is It Illegal To Warm Up Your Car In Iowa?

It looks like we might be getting some more bad weather this weekend. Forecasters are predicting snow and have issued a blizzard warning for Thursday evening into Friday. Most of us will try to stay home (and stay warm), but some people are going to have to go out and deal with the cold weather.

One of my weird habits is to check and see if I've unintentionally broken any laws when I go somewhere new. I found out that tipping was at one point illegal in Iowa! There are quite a few other odd laws that apply for all of Iowa and a few smaller regions in the state.

After some deep research I found out that it used to be illegal to leave your car on unattended if the engine was turned on. So, it was essentially against the law to warm up your car before you actually got into it to drive. If the engine is on someone had to be in the car, but if you leave it unattended then you better have turned the car all the way off.

This must've been super inconvenient for drivers with remote start. Since they would be breaking the law every single time they turned it on.

Having this law in place was meant to halt preemptive car thefts. Back in 2017, many people were concerned about this rule and thought it was unfair. It got overturned in March of that year. This came to a 49-0 decision in the Iowa State Senate which essentially put an end to this nearly one hundred year-old law. If you did break this law you would be punished with a $20 fine.

However, this law didn't apply to cars or other vehicles on private property.

Again, it is not illegal to do this anymore! I don't want to hear about anyone freezing their rear ends off after reading this. You can turn your engine on and let the car warm up even if you're not inside of the vehicle. Remote-start sure is a lifesaver.