Home Forums Gear Horses and ATV's Running 4 wheelers on public roads

I know many towns and states allow 4 wheelers on public roads with the proper lights but I wonder how long it will be until the feds step in. No 4 wheeler meets all the regulations that a car has to meet, crash tests, emissions, etc. They don't meet the definitions of a motorcycle. Is there a special set of federal rules that they fall under? It looks to me like it's ripe for a rule happy agency to jump all over.

They sure are a nuisance here in WI. A lot of the northern county roads allow them and they don’t go even go the speed limit and it is a hazard to pass them because there is usually a whole group of them running together. Everyone I talk to tells me that they worse gas mileage than their car, so I do wonder what the fascination of running on the road is? Dirt bikes are still forbidden on the roads and they have about the same lighting as an ATV or UTV.

In some states they can be classified as "vehicle of animal husbandry" with markings like a tractor, triangle slow moving. Lots used in the AG community.

I doubt running around on one like an idiot qualifies.

Just be glad you don't have the Amish and their fuucking horse buggies on the road to deal with. They damn sure don't go the speed limit. You get stuck behind them for miles going 10 mph and you will learn to hate the sonsabitches. If they're going to allow those, plus bicycles and mopeds/scooters they damn sure aught to allow ATV's.

Not legal in my area but people do it all the time.

Here in Utah......city streets/county roads can and are used for routes to trail heads

These routes are marked with 'ATV route signage'

Used by ATV/UTV/dirt bikes whether street legal or not

All that is required is that the machine is properly registered...annual off road registration

For example.....my '18 Kawi Teryx the annual off road fee runs around $56

Street legal kits are an option with registered license plate included

Kids under 16 w/o drivers license are required to have helmet & off road training/certification

Utah is a very friendly to off road vehicles...big dollar businesses support

Link shown.....one of the biggest ATV/UTV events held in Utah

https://paiutejam.com/?page_id=59

When I was a kid, the Game Warden wrecked a neighbor kid running his
dirt bike on the road. Kid was bruised up, and arrested.

Today, packs of drunks run their SxSs from bar to bar on Sunday runs.
Some so long they carry gas cans along with their coolers.

And the cops leave them alone.

They also run across private property as they see fit.
Again, no repercussions.

Yep, I see ATV's/UTV's running down the roads in Pa. all the time. Bunches of them riding together sometimes and pulling into stores and gas stations to refuel. So much so that I thought maybe it was legal. They are not legal on the roads here in NY but people run them on back roads all the time anyway. Sometimes a cop will nail you for it while I've seen others ignore it. Just depends on the cop and his mood at the time I guess but more often than not they seem to ignore so long as it's on a rural back road.

If you want the cops to quit harassing you, there's a way to do it...but I highly recommend against it. That's to start petitioning to get it on the next ballot to be voted on by the public. If it passes, the cops can't bother you. But, that's why I don't recommend it. If it loses, the cops will be on you like stink on Biden. They'll shut it down completely. Many voters hate 4 wheelers like they do bicycles.

ATV's and UTV's bother me a whole lot less than bicycles, scooters and particularly those Amish with their horse buggies. The ATV's are usually going at a decent rate of speed down a back road at least and most often stay over toward or on the shoulders if they can. Not the case with those pokey buggies and often the bicycles too. Been more than once I've come around a curve and damn near rear ended a buggy and had to really slam on the brakes or swerve into the other lane to avoid it. I would outlaw those fuggin buggies in a heartbeat if it were up to me. Those Amish need to get with the program and buy cars or stay the fuuck home. It's particularly irritating because many use tractors and skid steers on their farms and will accept a ride in a car but insist on driving those damned buggies to town.

You ought to experience 8500 gallon of gasolene behind you,
cruising down a twisty state road about 9 on a nice Sunday morning.
Into a blind tur...HO-LI-PHŮCK!


An A-mish Freightliner going about 10!

That'll make you spill your coffee and suck seat cover up your åss.



Some townships have made SXSs legal on TWP roads.
Those are the back, back roads.
Dirt, or ones without lines. Right wheels in the dirt paring oncoming cars.
Most, don't go far.

Our townships experience is completely opposite this since the county legalized ATV and SxS use on public roads a few years ago.
Compliance with regulations is rare, be it type of machine, location, safety or speed. And of course DWI.
Public lands, on which there is no legal ORV use, have become open season whether there is a "trail" or not.
LE seems to have no interest in enforcement.
The county has layed out the rules and regulations, referring to "DOT approved" in some instances.

Another thing that pisses me off is that we have snowmobile trails that go all over the State, across hundreds of miles of both public and private land, down roads, through towns and over bridges yet there are no public ATV trails and the only place you can legally ride them is on private land. This despite the fact that we are required to license and register them. Well fuuck those money grubbin cock suckers, if we can't ride them on any public trails/roads we damn sure shouldn't have to pay to license and register them.

That's how it is here in NJ. Dirt bikes too.

Mi made it basically to expensive with a alot of hoops to jump through to make them legal. You still see legal ones but usually they are like RAZR 1000's and similar.

Sheriff's generally won't bother you if your not driving crazy. I'm in a farming community so it's common. I'll hop in ours and run to the gas station or somewhere in town if it's a nice day.

Again

Utah is more than ATV/UTV friendly (guns too)

Marysvale in central Utah is in the middle of everything

Beautiful area !

http://marysvaleutah.org/

We have atv trails here - 100's of miles of them. Most are 50" trails so most UTV's are prohibited. We have a 50" Polaris RZR that we can take on any of them.

Nice ! Wish we had the same. We have hundreds of miles of "seasonal limited use highways" { unmaintained dirt roads} going through our State forests and ATV's aren't allowed on those either. 4x4's, horses, buggies, motorcycles and snowmobiles but no ATV's. It's ridiculous and little wonder so many ATV owners ignore the law and ride on them anyway.

It’s not a fascination with running in the road in WI. Pay attention…the roads ARE the atv trails. I run them all the time in WI. It’s far from a fascination, it’s annoying.

The best way to get the police to stop bothering you is to obey the law. I know today in this liberal age of "I wanna do it so I should be allowed to do it" BS that is a foreign concept.

In Wyoming you can license and insure ATV/UTV's and drive them on the road just like a car/truck. There are plenty around these parts and they don't seem to be a problem. They must have proper lighting and turn signals to be legal.

One of the worst inventions in the last 20 years are those [bleep] sxs's.

Yeah. They'll never catch on.

They're not road legal in Mississippi but lots of people ride them on rural roads and I've never known the cops to say anything about it. As far as I'm concerned it's another area where we don't need more rules or laws.

Public roads don't bother me as much as some yahoo riding one off trail thru my elk hunting area . Mostly around here, it is some kids joy riding. Every once in awhile I have to visit the parents and ask them to curtail the speeding.

It is illegal here and if the conversation gets hot, I explain they can curtail the speeding and no one will mind or we will get the sheriff involved and stop it completely. I usually works out.

Yeah, they really fup the ATV trails up. They have higher axles, bigger diameter wheels and tires, so dig the mud ruts so deep it hangs up ATVs and we have to just start a new track alongside the old one. Does wonders for run-off and trail aesthetics. But what the hell, in a million years no one will note the difference....

There are ATV scars on the Arctic tundra that will last for centuries, UTV's would be worse, but there's not many of those - at least where I have been.

That said, between snow machine riding, ATV riding, and UTV riding, Honey Halflab knows what is best, and wants me to buy her her own UTV. You would think she would have learned after i bought her a Dachshund when she asked for a dog of her own.

LOL. One of each is best. Lack of established trail/roads points to ATV. Where they will fit, today’s SxS machines are really useful. I only have a few neighbors, but I see them on their “buggies” more than their vehicles. Most have cattle, run hog traps, hunt local land, etc.

I mentioned before that we have a 50" SXS, a Polaris RZR. It has the same footprint as most larger ATV's and has the same tire sizes. We have 100's of miles of ATV trails on BLM and Nat forest land. They're closed to wider than 50" and most have some kind of barricade to prevent wider ones from getting through. Sometimes they use heavy steel posts. Sometimes they'll put VW sized rocks 52" apart, just barely wide enough for us to ooze through. There have been many times that I've wished for a larger UTV but this gives us access to all those miles of trails where we seldom see anyone else. In the meantime, the Jeep roads are being beaten down by the 60"+ UTV's.

I was driving west on a state highway, I went by a fourwheeler, at a stop sign, the first time I looked in the rearview mirror he was on my tail, and I'm doing 60mph!

When mine gets over 40 on a paved road, it starts getting squirrely.

There is a guy named Andrew Camarata on Youtube who converted a Kawasaki SxS to street legal and, IIRC, registered it in Montana even though he lives in New York.

A lot of farmers around here use them to get around on both gravel and paved roads when they are checking on cattle or irrigation systems.

I just bought a 2023 Rincon and was planning on getting it street legal with all the necessary parts and documentation. I live in a small town and you could get away with a little street use if you don’t act reckless but you won’t keep getting away with it. My thinking was that I could use it to go pick up something small from the store or just go for a drive as that could be fun and it could save a small amount of wear and tear to my truck. The issue I found is they are not really fun on the pavement. They are loud with the tires and not as smooth and balanced as I like. Off road or on the dirt roads, fine since they’re not the smoothest anyway. I decided not to do it and buy a motorcycle down the road.

Had to laugh the other day, was sitting in a strip center parking lot and a loud 4 wheeler(not even SXS) came up to a car, made the drug delivery, chatted a bit and left out!
Had a plate so I guess it was "street legal".

This appeared to be delivery to dealer and the delivery package was small so it would be interesting as to contents.

It's hard to beat a small dual sport for that duty. It's amazing the number of cool places you'll find once you get off the beaten path on 2 wheels.

Hate to have to ride one on the pavement for a short distance. Wears the tires to fast , try to stay on the shoulder as much as possible

I had dot tires on my little Yamaha Rhino, and drove it all over on the streets here in N Idaho (there legal here)
It was handy on the ranch, but underpowered and fairly slow. Just sold it, looking for a new Honda that has a real transmission instead of rubber band drive.
It’s nothing to go to a little breakfast joint and see 4 horses, a tractor and a bunch of SxS’s and quads in the parking lot, or at the fuel station next door. It’s a pretty laid back atmosphere here.

Just for the record - the orange triangle low speed vehicle sign (which I've NEVER seen on a 4-wheeler) is required for vehicles moving less than some speed dictated by the state. Here in Idaho it's 35 mph which is probably fairly standard.
If you driving a LSV on a public road, you must have a valid drivers license.
And you must have the same minimum liability insurance as required for regular vehicles. I suspect the insurance is regularly ignored but if a cop pulls you over for some reason, I'll bet he won't ignore it.

Pretty much the same in SD Rock Chuck atv has to be street legal mirrors,horn, brake light to be plated. Licensed driver and insured. Bought mine for trail work but trails come out on roads...mb

They not legal here on roads but we cheated last weekend turkey hunting. Highway Patrol friend said nothing would happen in Mendicino or Lake counties as the officer would probably stop you to see how your doing. In a county like San Francisco you would probably get at least 5 months in the slammer

There was a deputy at the foot of my driveway the other day due to a hunting accident in the adjoining wildlife refuge (on public road). My neighbor pulled in to chat with him while in his Polaris Ranger, then turned around and drove home. I don't think the local LE guys view it as a serious problem when it's not out on the 55mph+ highways (or kids doing stupid stunts at high speeds).

twps, etc can make them legal here on municipal roads. theey are not legal on State roads. there is also this new "thing" where folks add road tires, brake lights and turn signals to sxs UTVS and registers them in UT or Mt and runs them on state roads here. as to know its a gray area, however legislation is working it's way through to nix that play.

Idaho rules

No mention of horn, or turn signals. Riding used to be allowed on state hiways within a certain distance of a town. That may be changed.

Local farmers ride them where ever they feel the need to go. I ride my Suzuki Vinson 500 to the school and back occasionally for grand kids' athletic events.

Some of our hunting units have specific prohibitions against hunting from an ATV. They are okay for packing camp, or meat, but not for spotting game.

In those units, travel is limited to roads accessible by full sized automobiles. However, under the definition of that full sized car, it specifies that it's anything over 1500lb. There are lots of UTV's out there that weigh more than that. At the same time, while a UTV can be used on about any road anywhere, you still can't shoot from it. You have to get out and get off of the road.