Tennessee Motorcycle Safety Course
Verified against Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program ·
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 Tennessee 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.
Tennessee's motorcycle safety course requirements — including completion waiving the state skills test — are verified against Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program (see Rules of the Tennessee Department of Safety, Driver Control Division, Chapter 1340-01-11 — Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program), current as of 2026-07-28.
Tennessee Motorcycle Safety Course at a Glance
| Program | Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program |
|---|---|
| Who runs it | Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, Driver Control Division, which certifies the public and private sponsors that deliver the courses |
| Delivery model | State-approved sponsorsThe state licenses sponsors, who set their own tuition; the rider picks among them at market price. |
| Typical cost | — |
| Course length | — |
| Mandatory under age | — |
| Waives the riding skills test | Yes |
| Waives the knowledge test | Yes |
Tennessee runs a basic rider training course and an experienced rider training course. Class size is capped at 24 students, with at least one Rider Coach per 24 students in the classroom and at least two per 12 students on the range. A student under 15 is limited to a motor-driven cycle of no more than 125cc, and a student of 15 or older to a motorcycle of no more than 350cc, unless the Program Coordinator approves otherwise. A student may use their own motorcycle if it passes a Rider Coach's safety inspection and the student shows proof of ownership and current insurance.
A sponsor is any public or private agency, organisation, school, partnership, corporation or individual certified by the Department to provide motorcycle education courses. Courses are open to any Tennessee resident holding a valid driver licence of any class, or eligible for a Class P-M permit or Class M licence. Tuition is not a single published figure: a sponsor that accepts a departmental start-up subsidy grant may not charge more than $250 per student for the basic rider training course or $150 per participant for the experienced rider training course, while a private sponsor that takes no start-up subsidy sets its own fee. Each sponsor must file its fees with the Program Coordinator in writing by 1 July each year. The programme is funded through the Motorcycle Rider Safety Fund, a restricted receipts account created under T.C.A. § 55-51-104.
What Tennessee’s course covers
Tennessee teaches the Basic Rider Training course (BRT/BRC), 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 Tennessee differs: Tennessee runs a basic rider training course and an experienced rider training course. Class size is capped at 24 students, with at least one Rider Coach per 24 students in the classroom and at least two per 12 students on the range. A student under 15 is limited to a motor-driven cycle of no more than 125cc, and a student of 15 or older to a motorcycle of no more than 350cc, unless the Program Coordinator approves otherwise. A student may use their own motorcycle if it passes a Rider Coach's safety inspection and the student shows proof of ownership and current insurance.
Once you complete the course, see license requirements in Tennessee.
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.
- Licence classes, permit ages and restrictions, testing rules and the helmet requirement come from the Rules of the Tennessee Department of Safety, Driver Control Division, as published in the Tennessee Secretary of State's official compilation of effective rules. Training facts come from the same compilation's chapter on the Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program.
- The Tennessee Department of Safety's own website could not be reached from the environment used to research this page, so nothing here has been checked against that department's current published guidance. The helmet rules are checked against the Public Acts of the Tennessee General Assembly and are current to April 2025. The licence and training rules come from the state's effective compilation, but the motorcycle licensing chapter was last revised in 2001 and the training chapter in 2006, and a rule cannot show a later change to the underlying statute. Fees in particular are not shown at all: the rules describe how Tennessee's licence fees are structured but state no amount, and the Department's fee schedule is published only on the site that could not be reached.
- Tennessee's crash-helmet requirement applies to every driver and every passenger, with no exemption for age, insurance or riding experience. The statute lists a small number of situational exceptions, of which the fully enclosed autocycle and the escorted funeral or memorial procession are described here; the full list could not be read from a reachable primary source.
- No course price is shown for Tennessee. A sponsor that accepts a state start-up subsidy may not charge more than $250 for the basic rider course or $150 for the experienced rider course, but a private sponsor that takes no subsidy sets its own fee, so no single figure is published.
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: Rules of the Tennessee Department of Safety, Driver Control Division, Chapter 1340-01-11 — Tennessee Motorcycle Rider Education Program