Driver's License Restriction Codes in Virginia: The Honest Answer

There is no published list of Virginia driver’s license restriction codes for ordinary licenses. The Code of Virginia names none, and as of September 2026 the DMV’s published letter legend covers commercial licenses only. For a Class D license the authoritative decode is printed on the back of the card — the DMV says exactly that about the credential it does describe in detail.

Where Virginia driver’s license restriction codes come from

Restrictions come from Va. Code § 46.2-329, which lets the DMV impose conditions “suitable to the licensee’s driving ability with respect to the type of, or special mechanical control devices required on, a motor vehicle which the licensee may drive, or any other restrictions applicable to the licensee as the Department may determine.”

Read that again, because the last clause is the reason this page exists. The General Assembly gave the Department an open-ended power and never wrote a list. Nothing in Title 46.2 assigns a meaning to A, B, C, E or any other character. What appears on the card is the Department’s own coding of a condition, not a statutory code.

The practical consequence: an answer that does not come from the DMV, from your own card or from your own DMV record is a guess, however confidently a website states it.

The codes Virginia does publish

The DMV publishes a handful of code meanings in the places where they matter, rather than as a single legend. These are the ones on its own site.

Code	Where the DMV publishes it	What the DMV says it means
Class D	Driver privilege card page	Decoded on the back as “Operator DL”; a Class D license “allows you to operate passenger vehicles” — see what a Class D license covers
Class M / M2 / M3	Getting a Motorcycle License	Both two- and three-wheeled / two-wheeled only / three-wheeled only
Restriction 6	Getting a Motorcycle License	Shown with an M designation, it means motorcycle only — the holder “may not operate a motor vehicle”; see the motorcycle license classification
Restriction 9	Driver privilege card page	Decoded on the back as “Limited duration (See expiration date on front)”
CDL restriction letters	CDL classifications page	A commercial scheme covering vehicle configurations and equipment such as air brakes

Two cautions travel with that table. The CDL letters belong to commercial driving and mean nothing on an ordinary license — applying them to a Class D card produces confident nonsense. And the class field and the restriction field are different columns; “D” is a class, “6” is a restriction, and they are read separately.

Why the same character can mean two things

The clearest demonstration is on the DMV’s own driver privilege card page, which uses “9” twice.

In its classification section, the DMV says the card “will display ‘D’ under the ‘Class’ heading and ‘9’ under ‘Restrictions,’” and that the back decodes “9” as “Limited duration (See expiration date on front).”

Further down, under medical requirements, the DMV explains that a parent or guardian of a holder under 18 may submit a signed physician statement asking for indicators to be placed on the card, and that “a ‘9’ will display in the restriction field on the face of the license and will be decoded on the back” as one of a list of conditions — insulin-dependent diabetic, speech impairment, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, traumatic brain injury or non-apparent disability.

Same agency, same page, same character, two different decodes — and in both cases the meaning is carried on the back of the card rather than by the character itself. That is the strongest available answer to “what does my code mean”: the front tells you there is a condition, the back tells you which one.

Why lists from other states are worse than nothing

Search for a restriction letter and most of what comes back is another state’s table, or a national summary assembled from several. Those lists are not interchangeable. States assign their own characters, and a letter that means one thing in Washington or California may be unused, or used for something else entirely, in Virginia.

The commercial scheme makes the same point inside Virginia. A CDL restriction is defined for commercial motor vehicles — air brake configurations and the like — and has no application to the passenger car on your driveway. Borrowing it because the letters look familiar is the most common way readers end up with a wrong answer about their own license.

How to find out what your own code means

Four reliable routes, in the order that costs you least:

1. Turn the card over. Virginia credentials carry the decode on the back — the DMV states this for the driver privilege card, the credential it documents most fully — and it is the fastest answer available.
2. Look at your DMV driving record. Section 46.2-208 governs when Department records are open and how privileged information is released; the DMV sells a copy of your own driver record, which shows the class and restrictions it holds for you.
3. Read the DMV correspondence. A restriction added after a medical review arrives with a letter explaining the condition, the reports required and the review cycle.
4. Ask the DMV. A customer service center can tell you what is on your own record. No third-party page can.

What a restriction code does not tell you

A code is not a conviction and carries no demerit points; Virginia points follow convictions, not conditions. It is not a suspension either, though § 46.2-329 lets the Department suspend a license after 10 days’ written notice where its records show the restriction has not been complied with, until the section is complied with.

And driving in violation of a printed restriction is a Class 2 misdemeanor under § 46.2-329 — under § 18.2-11, up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000, either or both. What the statute fixes is the maximum; what a court does with a particular case is a question for that court, and a Virginia traffic attorney can review one.

A restricted license is a different thing

The last paragraph of § 46.2-329 draws a line that matters here. Driving outside the terms of a restricted license issued under § 18.2-271.1 E — the limited privilege a court grants after a DUI suspension — “is not guilty of a violation of this section but is guilty of a violation of § 18.2-272.” A court order listing permitted trips is not a code on the card, and the two are governed by different sections.

Changing a code on your license

Section 46.2-328 D allows the DMV to make changes to what a license carries during its validity, and § 46.2-325 A requires the Department to examine an applicant’s physical and mental qualifications and ability to drive safely. Between them, a restriction added when your circumstances were different can be revisited when they change — see how to remove a corrective lenses restriction for the version of this with a published DMV procedure, and what a license restriction means for the law behind all of them.

The letters people search for, and what can honestly be said about them

The searches that bring people here are almost always a single character: restriction A, B, C, E, the pair AB, or a number such as 1, 9 or 12. It is worth being direct about each of them at once.

For an ordinary Virginia license, no published Virginia source assigns a meaning to any of those letters. That is not an evasion; it is the finding. Title 46.2 contains no table, the DMV’s public legend is the commercial one, and the Department’s own instruction for reading a code is to look at the back of the card. A page that fills the gap with a letter table has taken it from somewhere else.

Two of those searches do have Virginia answers, and they are in the table above: a 6 shown with a motorcycle designation means motorcycle only, and a 9 on a driver privilege card is decoded on the back. Neither of those transfers to a different character, and the 9 does not even transfer between two uses on the same DMV page.

If you have a letter and no card to hand, the honest sequence is: check the back of the card, then your DMV driving record, then ask the DMV. Anything else is someone else’s state.

If the restriction on your license looks wrong

Restrictions are attached to a live license, so an error is worth correcting promptly rather than at the next renewal. Where a restriction followed the DMV’s medical review, the Department’s correspondence sets out what it relied on and there is a published appeals route. Where it was applied at the counter — a vision screening result, for example — a fresh screening is usually the shortest path, and § 46.2-328 D is the provision that lets the Department change what the license carries before it expires.

Either way, keep driving within the restriction printed on the card until the record has actually changed. The offense in § 46.2-329 is committed by driving against what is printed, not by driving against what the Department intended to print.