Hawaii Motorcycle Safety Course
Verified against State-approved Basic Rider Course requirement (Act 66, amending HRS § 286-110) ·
Compiled and verified against primary state DMV/DPS/BMV sources by GetMotorcycleLicense Research Team — cite-or-deny, with no invented figures. How we source & verify →
Whether Hawaii mandates a motorcycle safety course by age is not published by the state's own program. This page covers who runs the course, what it costs, how long it takes, and exactly which tests completing it can waive.
Hawaii's motorcycle safety course requirements — including completion waiving the state skills test if within 3 months — are verified against State-approved Basic Rider Course requirement (Act 66, amending HRS § 286-110) (see Hawai'i Department of Transportation — Motorcycles, Motor Scooters and Mopeds General Information (Act 66 requirement, provider list)), current as of 2026-07-28.
Hawaii Motorcycle Safety Course at a Glance
| Program | State-approved Basic Rider Course requirement (Act 66, amending HRS § 286-110) |
|---|---|
| Who runs it | Hawai'i Department of Transportation, delivered by University of Hawai'i Community Colleges — Leeward Community College on Oahu, and Hawai'i Community College on Hawai'i Island (currently suspended; contact the college for status) |
| Delivery model | Community collegesCommunity colleges and universities are the delivery channel. |
| Typical cost | — |
| Course length | 18 hours |
| Mandatory under age | — |
| Waives the riding skills test | Yes, if within 3 months |
| Waives the knowledge test | No |
Hawai'i's Basic RiderCourse pairs a 3-hour e-course, completed before the in-person sessions, with 5 hours of classroom instruction and 10 hours of on-motorcycle training over two days.
Act 66 (effective 19 May 2025) moved course completion ahead of permit issuance rather than leaving it as an alternative to the state's later road test: from 24 December 2025, every new Class 2 Instruction Permit application requires the course first. The course remains open to riders 16 and older. Hawai'i's own Motorcycle Operator Manual is derived from the same NHTSA/Motorcycle Safety Foundation cooperative-agreement template used in other states' manuals, corroborating the curriculum identity, though the Department's own general-information pages describe the requirement only as 'a state-approved Basic Rider Course' without naming the Motorcycle Safety Foundation directly.
What Hawaii’s course covers
Hawaii teaches the Basic RiderCourse (BRC) – Hawai'i Edition, developed by Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Full detail here.
The Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Basic RiderCourse is designed for beginning riders aged 16 and up, pairing about five hours of classroom or online learning with about ten hours of on-motorcycle training, and it ends in a written knowledge test and a rider skills test.
How Hawaii differs: Hawai'i's Basic RiderCourse pairs a 3-hour e-course, completed before the in-person sessions, with 5 hours of classroom instruction and 10 hours of on-motorcycle training over two days.
Once you complete the course, see license requirements in Hawaii.
Source Notes
Where a source is stale, conflicting, or required a judgment call, we document it here rather than presenting a single confident-sounding number. See our methodology for how these calls are made.
- Licensing rules come from the Hawai'i Department of Transportation and Hawai'i Revised Statutes Chapter 286. Hawai'i has no single statewide DMV: each county issues driver licences and instruction permits, and sets its own permit fees under HRS § 286-111, so this page cannot state one statewide fee figure with confidence and does not attempt to.
- Effective 24 December 2025, Hawai'i requires a state-approved Basic Rider Course before a Class 2 Instruction Permit can be issued at all — a recent change (Act 66) that a rider planning to apply should check is still current.
- Hawai'i's motorcycle helmet law applies only to a rider under 18; this differs from Hawai'i's separate moped helmet law, which applies to a moped rider of any age.
means no primary source publishes that figure — left blank on purpose rather than estimated or copied from an unverified aggregator.
Sources
Data last verified: 2026-07-28 (verified by: agent) | Source: Hawai'i Department of Transportation — Motorcycles, Motor Scooters and Mopeds General Information (Act 66 requirement, provider list)