Writing tools

Two documents set much of what happens to an electric unicycle rider: a comment or letter filed into an open docket, and a request that a state attorney general say what an ambiguous statute actually means. This page describes what each one has to contain. Neither is a form on this site — PEVRA does not draft, host or file anything on a rider’s behalf today, and where that is planned rather than built, the page says so.

PEVRA Lettersmith

Lettersmith is PEVRA’s name for help writing to an agency or a legislature about a rule that affects riders. The old pevra.org listed it among membership benefits, as a “letter-writing service”. What exists today is public, needs no membership, and is smaller than that phrase suggests: the structure below, plus the specific ask already published on each open calendar entry. There is no form here, PEVRA does not write a letter for you, and nothing you write is sent through this site.

A comment or a letter that gets read has six parts, in roughly this order.

• Who you are and where you ride. A name, a city or a county, and the fact that you ride the device the rule is about. In PEVRA’s experience, anonymous comments are counted and named ones are quoted.
• The docket number or the bill number. Copy it exactly from the official document — a comment filed into the wrong docket is filed into no docket. Every entry on the action calendar prints the identifier its source carries and links the official document behind it.
• What the instrument actually does. One or two sentences, in your words, describing the effect on the device you ride: which definition it lands in, or fails to land in, and what follows from that. Not an argument yet — a statement of the mechanism.
• What you are asking for, and by when. A specific change to specific words, not a sentiment. If the fix is drafting language, the model templates hold text a legislature or an agency can lift, with the definition written by function rather than by shape.
• One specific fact from your own riding. The single thing an agency cannot get from anyone else: the trail you were turned off, the commute the definition makes illegal, the officer who read the statute a different way than the last one did. One concrete incident outweighs a page of general agreement.
• What you are not claiming. Saying plainly where you are uncertain is what makes the rest of the letter credible, and in PEVRA’s experience an agency that catches an overstatement discounts the whole filing.

Planned, not built. A generator that fills a draft from a calendar entry and a rider’s own place is the obvious next step. It is not built, because it needs a decision first about whether PEVRA hosts the text a rider sends — which would make PEVRA a party to it — or hands it over and stays out of the way. Until that is decided there is no submission button here, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

The attorney-general opinion request

An attorney-general opinion is a written answer from a state’s attorney general saying what an existing statute means. It is not new law and it does not bind a court: courts often treat it as persuasive; whether agencies and police follow it varies. It is the cheapest instrument on this page — no session, no comment window, no vote — and the slowest to be worth anything if the question is asked badly.

When it is the right instrument. When a statute excludes electric unicycles by shape rather than by function — a definition that requires two or three wheels, or handlebars, or a floorboard, so a one-wheeled self-balancing device falls out of the category it plainly belongs to and into a motor-vehicle residual it cannot be registered under — and no court in that state has construed the words, and no bill is moving. Where the text is clear and simply says the wrong thing, an opinion cannot fix it and a legislative patch can; that is what the model templates are for.

Who may ask. Attorneys general do not take a request from anyone. Each office publishes who may ask; check that attorney general’s published rules before you write — the answer is usually a public official the statute names, and usually not a private person. The rules differ state by state. So the usual shape of this work is not filing the request; it is writing the request, and giving it to someone who is allowed to sign it.

What a request has to contain.

• The question, phrased so it can be answered. One sentence, naming the statute by section number and asking what it means as applied to a described device. Not “are electric unicycles legal here”.
• The exact text at issue, quoted from the official code, with the date the source itself carries.
• The facts that make it live. A real device with real specifications, and a real consequence — a citation issued, an access denied, two agencies reading the same words differently.
• Both readings, stated fairly. The reading you want and the reading you expect to lose to. An office that finds the opposing argument missing supplies it itself, less generously than you would have.
• The authority that already exists. Prior opinions of that same attorney general, any case law construing neighbouring definitions, and how other states drafted the same category. PEVRA’s legal database quotes and cites those definitions where a steward has verified them, and says so where nobody has.
• Who is asking, and under what authority. The official making the request, and the provision that lets them make it.

What PEVRA holds

These are PEVRA’s three stated positions. Any letter or request written with these tools is measured against them, and each is dated from the day PEVRA first held it.

1. Licensing. No licence should be required to operate below 30 mph (48 km/h). Held since 2026-08-28.
2. Device speed caps. Devices should never carry a built-in speed cap. PEVRA supports every rider speed limit a jurisdiction sets, by facility: rider limits yes, device limits no. Held since 2026-08-28.
3. Where EUCs belong. EUCs belong on all roads, bike paths and sidewalks, at a speed appropriate to and limited by the prevailing use of the space. Held since 2026-08-28.

What is deliberately not here

No legislator email address and no agency contact address. No petition. No contact widget, and no lookup that turns a postcode into the people who represent you — that page is /act/contact, it is Phase 2, and it does not exist yet. PEVRA keeps the pages that report what the law says separate from the pages that ask for something, and a build gate reads every education page on every deploy to check that the separation held. This page is on the asking side of that line, which is why it is listed in the repository file data/lobbying-pages.json and why the calendar entries that carry an ask are the only pages that link it.

This page is legal information, not legal advice, and is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Nothing here should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a legal opinion or otherwise engage in the practice of law. PEVRA does not warrant that this information is complete or accurate and disclaims all liability for any loss caused by errors or omissions. Laws change; check the 'as of' date and the official source linked on every claim.

As of 2026-09-05 · git c35aac7 · The action calendar · The templates