Cars covered in Christmas lights are fun, but police say please don’t drive them

Embracing the holiday season, Cayla Helgeson decked out her pickup truck this year with lots of Christmas lights — nearly 5,000 of them.

“It actually was a TikTok trend,” she said. “And I was like, ‘I have never seen this in Minnesota before. I am going to figure out how to do this.’”

A drive to the supermarket turned the Chaska woman’s truck into a local sensation. She said she was in the parking lot with the lights on when hundreds of curious people came streaming over to see it.

“The amount of people in 45 minutes that came through … probably about 500. It was crazy,” she recalled. “Everybody was like: ‘I have never seen this. I love it. You are in the holiday spirit.’”

Captured on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, elaborate car-light displays have turned up on busy avenues, parking lots and rural highways across Minnesota this season. Police, though, wish drivers would curb their fun to the driveway. On the road, they say cars loaded with shining Christmas lights are a safety hazard that can bring a citation to go along with the social media love.

Kyle Everson from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said a person can turn on those lights on private property or in parking lots. People can also decorate their vehicles with non-lighted accessories if they are safely secured and if they do not cover license plates, the vehicle’s lights or obstruct the driver’s view.

It is not permitted to drive around with Christmas lights on. According to Minnesota statute, nonemergency vehicles cannot have or use red, blue, white or nonstandard colored lights on highways unless authorized by the public safety commissioner.

Helgeson said she’ll drive to local store parking lots and light the lights to entertain people; two of her friends have done the same.

Her truck has 12 streams of lights, each 65 feet long with 400 bulbs. “You have to make sure you have enough power to control the lights. I put a power inverter from my cigarette lighter outlet and then ran that to a power strip. And then from the power strip, I ran light out and out through the door, and then just started taping them on,” she told MPR News.

Zebulon “Zeb” Shefa is a University of Minnesota freshman and also a TikTok personality. He did the same to his car early in December and what started as a fun way to spread the Christmas spirit became one of his favorite projects.

“My main idea with that was mostly kind of just to brighten up everybody’s faces during finals week, because obviously it’s a stressful time,” he said.

After 12 hours of teamwork, 4,000 lights and tons of painters tape his car was ready. He drove around the Dinkytown neighborhood by the U campus and recorded people’s positive reactions.

Police reactions can vary nationwide. In 2023, YouTuber Jake Schnatter wrapped his BMW 4 with more than 2,000 Christmas lights and was stopped by local police officers who tossed him a compliment instead of a citation.

Both Helgeson and Shefa this year were first-time decorators and were forced to learn the rules after being pulled over and receiving warnings.

“I kind of get the fact that the lights are distracting to drivers and that people will turn next, and that will cause accidents,” Shefa said. “Especially with already the bad roads, I don’t want to be more of a distraction.”

While they don’t drive around with their vehicles lit up anymore, both decorators promise to keep covering them with lights every year.

“In today’s society you never know what somebody is going through and just seeing them come over to me with a big smile on their face says a lot,” Helgeson said.

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