Before you rely on this

Before you rely on this page

We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice.

What this page is: the statutes and ordinances themselves, quoted and linked, so you can open them and read them yourself. Every rule below names the instrument it came from and the date we last checked it.

What it isn't: a ruling about your machine, your street, or your ride. Laws change. Cities add their own rules on top of the state's, and a single trip can cross two sets of rules without a sign to tell you. Checking your federal, state and local law — and checking that nothing has changed since the date below — is yours to do, and you are the only one who can do it for where you actually ride.

If something turns on it — a purchase, a citation, an insurance claim — talk to a licensed attorney in your state.

Last verified: —. That is the oldest date on this page, not the newest.

That date is the oldest thing we checked. Separately, a city’s own code can be years older than our reading of it — where it is, the jurisdiction’s entry below says so.

Your answer

The sections quoted, in full

Why there is no federal answer

You will see “750 W / 20 mph” quoted at scooters almost everywhere. It comes from one sentence of federal law, and that sentence is about something else:

“the term ‘low-speed electric bicycle’ means a two- or three-wheeled vehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts… whose maximum speed… is less than 20 mph.” 15 U.S.C. §2085(b)

“Fully operable pedals” is the first element of that definition, and the definition is conjunctive — a device needs all of it to be inside. A standing scooter has none, so it was never in the sentence, and the two numbers in it were never about scooters. The federal agency that would otherwise regulate these vehicles has said so in writing, and the CPSC files that section under its bicycle regulations.

There is no federal line a scooter can be “over.” Federal law here regulates the product, not the ride. Your state defines the vehicle; your city restricts where and when.

The seven parts

The local layer

Everything here, and where it came from

What we caught before this went up

Two lists live here. This one is what our own review caught before anyone read it. The second opens the day a reader catches something we missed — and a page that only ever fills the first is not being read hard enough.

2026-08-01 — Bunker Hill Village. A draft read: “makes it unlawful to ride this class on any public sidewalk — and, in the same ordinance, requires that it shall be ridden on sidewalks.” That pronoun asserted the two sections name the same machine. They do not use the same term — one says “moped or motor-assisted scooter,” the other says “electric scooters” — and the code never says whether those are one device. Caught in review; both terms are now named and the identity question left open.

2026-08-01 — Morgan's Point. A draft read: “the stricter reading is the safe one here — stay off the sidewalk.” That subtracted a permission state law expressly grants. Caught in review; the caution now attaches to parks and parking, which are genuinely unsettled, and not to the sidewalk, which is not.

2026-08-01 — Austin. A draft said a departmental rule “binds the permit-holding rental operators it is written for.” That rule had not been read. Caught in review; it now states what was actually done — the code was searched and the figure is not in it.