i live in california. i have a mini chopper half the size of a regular motorcycle and california law says its illegal yet it is much safer than a goped it goes 40 miles an hour has headlight blinkers ect. i am familar with the laws federal and state but they dont make sense considering moped arent freeway safe yet they are allowed on the street legally its not a pocket bike small rice burner type you sit just as high as on a moped practiclly. cansomebody explain it to me why they say these mini choppers are illegal and not safe and gopeds and mopeds are ?
Mini Motorcycle Street Legal
There are a lot of factors here, I'll try to go through them. Mopeds/scooters are legal because they can register them as such. CVT transmission (automatic), no more than 2 gross brake hp, limited to 30mph by law. Section 406(a) VC refers to a moped or motorized bicycle as any two or three wheeled device having fully operative pedals for propulsion by human power, or having no pedals if powered solely by electrical energy, has an automatic transmission, and a motor which produces less than 2 gross brake horespower and is capable of propelling the device at a maximum speed of not more than 30 miles per hour on level ground. Pocket Bikes/ mini motorcycles are illegal because they do not fall into the catagory of moped/scooter specifications and they do not fall into the motorcycle catagory of minimum of 150cc. They currently do not have a classification for those types of machines in the books. The demand for that classification is not high enough in the United States. If you want to make your mini chopper legal. then do a simple 150cc scooter engine swap and register it.
