Burning Man is primarily a pedestrian and bicycle only event and has been since 1997. The land that we host the event on is governed by the US Bureau of Land Management permit. The permit requires the Burning Man Organization to manage and control vehicle traffic during the event. We take this requirement very seriously because if we don't manage and control the traffic on the playa, the BLM will.

So, because we can't allow ALL vehicles to move during the event, we as an organization have decided that only vehicles that somehow contribute to the event will be licensed. And since we can't trust people to judge their own vehicle's worthiness to the event, we have set up a process so we can try and be as fair as possible.