Motorcycle License in VA: How the Class M Designation Works

Virginia does not issue a motorcycle license alongside the one you already hold. It issues a classification — M, M2 or M3 — that is printed on the driver’s license you already carry, under Va. Code § 46.2-328 C. There are two routes: pass the DMV’s motorcycle knowledge exam and road skills test, or complete a Virginia Rider Training Program course, on which the Commissioner may waive either examination or both. The classification costs $2 per year on top of your license. (A rider with no other license can instead be issued a motorcycle-only license — covered below.)

How to get your motorcycle license in Virginia

The Code of Virginia treats riding as a class of driving rather than a separate credential. Section 46.2-328 A lists the four things a Virginia license can be classified for — motorcycle, school bus, commercial vehicle and passenger car — and subsection C says that an applicant who already holds a valid license is “granted a classification on his license to drive motorcycles … in addition to any other vehicles his driver’s license … may authorize him to operate.”

That single sentence explains most of what confuses new riders. Your card, your license number and your expiration date do not change. Nothing is issued separately, so there is nothing separate to renew, replace or lose. And because the motorcycle privilege lives on the license, a suspension of the license takes the motorcycle privilege with it.

If you are 18 or older, the DMV sets out two routes to that classification:

	Route 1 — test at DMV	Route 2 — rider course
Vision screening	Required	Required
Motorcycle knowledge exam	Required	May be waived on the course
Motorcycle learner’s permit	Hold it at least 30 days	Not required
Motorcycle road skills test	Required	May be waived on the course
Statutory basis	§ 46.2-337	§§ 46.2-1188 and 46.2-337

The waiver column says “may” because the statute does. Section 46.2-337 gives the Commissioner a discretion rather than the rider an entitlement, and the DMV’s published practice is set out below.

Under 18 the shape is the same but the waiting is longer: the DMV requires a motorcycle learner’s permit held for nine months on either route, and a course certificate reaches only the two examinations.

What Class M, M2 and M3 mean

Virginia prints one of three designations under “Class” on the license. The DMV’s Getting a Motorcycle License page gives the legend:

• M — both two-wheeled and three-wheeled motorcycles
• M2 — two-wheeled motorcycles only
• M3 — three-wheeled motorcycles only

This is not a DMV invention. Section 46.2-328 C requires the classification to “indicate as applicable a further restriction to a two-wheeled motorcycle only or a three-wheeled motorcycle only,” and § 46.2-337 makes the two road tests “separate and distinct examinations.” Pass the skills test on a two-wheeled bike and you get M2; pass it on a three-wheeler and you get M3. The machine you test on decides what you may ride.

One more code belongs here. If your license shows an M, M2 or M3 and a “6” under Restrictions, the DMV says you hold a motorcycle-only license and may not drive a car. That is the situation § 46.2-328 C describes for an applicant who did not already hold a license.

Route 1: the DMV knowledge exam and road skills test

Section 46.2-337 is short and absolute: “No person shall drive any motorcycle on a highway in the Commonwealth unless he has passed a special examination, including written material and a road test.”

In practice that means a vision screening, the motorcycle knowledge exam, a Virginia motorcycle learner’s permit held for at least 30 days if you are 18 or older, and then the road skills test on the type of motorcycle you want to be licensed for. Not every DMV customer service center offers the skills test, so check the DMV’s list of locations before you plan the trip.

There is a cost to failing. Under § 46.2-337, anyone who fails the road test twice is not eligible for the classification until he completes a rider safety training course from a provider licensed under Article 23. The course stops being optional at that point.

Route 2: the Virginia Rider Training Program waiver

Section 46.2-1188 defines a motorcycle rider safety training course and states its legal purpose in the definition itself: the courses exist “for the purposes of obtaining a waiver pursuant to § 46.2-337” for (i) both two- and three-wheeled motorcycles, (ii) two-wheeled only, or (iii) three-wheeled only.

Section 46.2-337 is where that purpose becomes operative, and its wording repays care. If the Commissioner is satisfied that a person “has demonstrated the same proficiency as required by the special examination” through an approved course, he may waive the written material portion, the road test portion, or both. It is a discretion exercised by the Commissioner, not an automatic entitlement earned by attendance, and a course certificate is evidence offered to him rather than a pass in its own right.

In published practice the DMV treats a completed course as satisfying both: its guidance says a rider who completes a Virginia Rider Training Program course “will not need to complete the motorcycle knowledge exam or road skills test.” That is how the discretion is normally exercised — but the statutory test is proficiency, and the decision remains the Commissioner’s.

The same discretionary waiver is open on a different footing to a Virginia license holder who is a member, the spouse of a member, or a dependent of a member of the US Armed Services and has completed an approved Armed Services basic motorcycle rider course.

Which waiver you earn depends on the bike you train on, exactly as with the DMV road test. A two-wheeled course produces an M2; a three-wheeled course produces an M3.

The 30-day temporary classification, and the trap in it

This is the provision most riders have never heard of. Under the second paragraph of § 46.2-328 C, a valid Virginia driver’s license issued to a person 19 years of age or older counts as a license carrying a temporary motorcycle classification when it is carried together with documentation of completing a licensed rider safety training course — or, for service members, their spouses and dependents, an approved US Armed Services basic rider course.

Two limits matter, and they are easy to run past:

1. The temporary classification is valid for 30 days from the course completion date shown on the documentation. After that, the DMV says you are not authorized to ride until you visit a customer service center and have the classification added.
2. The certificate itself is valid for one year, so missing the 30-day window costs you the right to ride in the meantime, not the waiver.

There is also a mail route that almost no one uses: a Virginia license holder who is a member, spouse of a member or dependent of a member of the US Armed Services is issued the motorcycle classification by mail on documentation of an approved Armed Services basic rider course and of an assignment outside the Commonwealth.

What a motorcycle classification costs

Two figures come straight from the statute. Section 46.2-332 A sets an additional fee of $2 per year for a motorcycle classification, and § 46.2-335 H sets the motorcycle learner’s permit fee at $3. The DMV’s published fee chart carries the same numbers and adds the base license: $4 per year, or $32 for the usual eight-year term.

So a rider adding a classification to an existing license pays the $2 per year for the remaining years, and a rider who wants a motorcycle-only license pays $6 per year — the DMV puts that at $6 per year for a credential normally valid eight years. State and local employees who ride a motorcycle solely in the line of duty are exempt from the additional motorcycle fee under § 46.2-332 D.

Riding without the classification

Section 46.2-328 F makes this a criminal charge, not a ticket. Anyone who drives a vehicle of one of the classified types while his license “does not carry an endorsement or indication that the licensee is licensed as provided in this section” is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor — under § 18.2-11, confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both.

That is the same class of offense as driving on a suspended license, and it is the reason the 30-day temporary window is worth watching. A charge under this section is a matter for a Virginia traffic attorney to look at on its own facts; what the statute fixes is the maximum, not what a court will do.

Restrictions are a separate mechanism. Under § 46.2-329 the DMV may attach conditions to a license “suitable to the licensee’s driving ability,” and driving in violation of one of those is a Class 2 misdemeanor. If your license carries letters or numbers you do not recognize, see what a restriction on a Virginia license means.

Keeping the classification

Because the classification rides on the license, it expires with it. Section 46.2-330 A sets the license term at no more than eight years and no less than five, and at no more than five years for anyone 75 or older. The DMV’s advice is blunt: when you renew the license, remember to renew the M, M2 or M3 designation with it. A lapse is covered in the one-year line on an expired Virginia license.

Moving to Virginia with an out-of-state endorsement

Virginia does not let you hold two licenses. The DMV’s position is that a rider with a valid out-of-state license cannot take out a Virginia motorcycle-only license at all; the route is to exchange the out-of-state license for a Virginia one and have the M, M2 or M3 designation added at the same time. An out-of-state motorcycle safety course certificate on its own, with no motorcycle designation on the out-of-state license, does not carry over.

That is worth checking before a move rather than after. The motorcycle privilege is part of the license record the new state is issuing, and § 46.2-328 B requires an applicant to state in the application the classification of every vehicle he intends to operate and to be examined “using the type of each vehicle for which he seeks to be licensed.” Naming the motorcycle at the counter is what puts it on the card; it is not added later by default.