Cook County, IL Mobility & Curb Rules: Shared E-Scooter Rules (2026)

Section 82-67 of the Vehicle Code flatly prohibits operating a 'motor-driven scooter', defined at Section 82-3 as any electric or gas wheeled scooter for which Illinois issues no title or registration, upon any public street, sidewalk, parking lot, bike path, park or other public property. Only three narrow exceptions apply: police, fire, municipal, special district, or County vehicles used by employees on duty; motorized wheelchairs; and electric personal assistance mobility devices (self-balancing, single-rider devices capped at 15 mph). Subsection (d) fixes the geographic reach precisely: the ban applies in unincorporated Cook County, in areas run by special districts within unincorporated territory, and in any municipality within the County that has not adopted its own scooter ordinance.

If a municipality passes its own rule, whether stricter, looser, or an opt-out electing not to be bound by the County section, the municipality's ordinance applies instead, and Section 82-67 does not reach that municipality's jurisdiction at all. That means Section 82-67 functions as a fallback default rather than a shared e-scooter program rule: Cook County has not enacted a permitting or dockless-scooter-vendor scheme of its own, and any city that wants shared scooters (as several Chicago-area suburbs and the City of Chicago itself have separately allowed) does so entirely under its own municipal code, outside this section.