The Inauguration of Legal Lane Splitting and Filtering in Minnesota
This week, on July 1, 2025, a new Minnesota law legalizing motorcycle lane splitting and filtering goes into effect, and I support this new law.
The option (it’s not required) for motorcyclists to ride between two rows of cars and trucks through congested situations has been controversial long before this new law was written and passed. The practice will remain controversial for a long time, not only among drivers but also for many motorcycle riders. Opinions about motorcycles and scooters moving between lanes through congested traffic is yet another example of the old saying: “There are two groups of people in the world, those who ____ (…like lane filtering) and those who ____ (…don’t)”. For the purpose here, let’s label those who favor the new law: ‘commuting-utility-transportation-mildly-hooligan-riders’ and those who dislike it: ‘fair-minded-safety-conscious-drivers-and-riders.’
With most traffic laws I lean a bit toward the mildly hooligan and transportation-riding side but still place myself nearer the middle of than either extreme, which means I sometimes enjoy playing around with the dynamic capabilities of whatever motorcycle or bicycle I’m riding, so long as it doesn’t upset, impact or otherwise endanger or concern anyone else. This means no flagrant (or even small) wheelies or stoppies in traffic, no loud exhausts, and no anti-social riding behaviors when sharing the road with others. But if nobody else is around, it’s ok with me if riders play around a bit. And if it comes to avoiding a dangerous traffic situation where I’m highly vulnerable, I’ll briefly transition into a selfish road pirate by doing whatever is necessary to protect myself -- regardless of applicable laws and rules of the road -- so long as my actions do not endanger anyone else.
A Short Personal Story: Experimental Lane Splitting
I’ve grown up riding here without being able to lane split and filter. Forty years ago, when I was starting Aerostich there was no internet, only monthly print motorcycle magazines. Most were headquartered in Southern California, partly because this is where the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers had their American headquarters, and partly because the weather and roads there were so favorable for riding all year around. To help promote the new (and at the time radical) Aerostich products I made friends with many of the magazine editors and writers there by sending them samples to try, and by riding out to California to meet with them.
When riding there I always enjoyed filtering. Many riders did it, including state police on motorcycles, even though it had never been formally made legal. It saved huge amounts of time. To this day it is difficult for me to understand why most drivers there prefer to sit motionless on congested freeways instead of riding. Our time is the only limited resource on the planet and riding through congestion gives us a lot more of it.
After my second or third trip out there, one very hot day I found myself in congested traffic here and decided to very carefully filter a few hundred feet to the front. Back then not all autos had climate control systems so many drivers and passengers had their windows lowered. You should have heard some of them yell (loudly!) as I slowly motored between the creeping and mostly stopped rows of cars. Some blew their horns and others shook their fists at me.
You would have thought I’d committed a most terrible and outrageous act against all of humanity. I could immediately see none of these people had ever experienced driving through Los Angeles’s famously overcrowded freeways. The reaction was so violent that within a few hundred feet I fell back into line (like the coward I wish I wasn’t), afraid one of those overheated and overly frustrated drivers would shoot at me like a movie cowboy on a horse might casually shoot a rattlesnake. I never did anything like that again. The strength of the adverse reaction of several of the drivers I’d just passed by was frightening. I’d semi-innocently violated everything they believed in about ‘sharing the road’. No ‘cuts’ allowed.
My guess is it will take five to ten years before lane filtering becomes even half as accepted here as it is across most of the rest of the world. There are simply not as many riders here as there are in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. I sure hope no innocent riders will be road-rage-injured-or-killed by some frustrated idiot.
– Mr. Subjective, June 30, 2025
It could be argued that becoming a motorcycle rider requires at least initially a smidgen of idealism and a mildly rebellious and slightly juvenile outlook…yet I know many responsible ‘born old’ riders who love riding motorcycles just as much as I do. One of them is a long-time acquaintance, Curt Quiner. He and his wife and their two daughters have been regular visitors to Aerostich and good customers for decades. Beyond my gratitude for their Aerostich business, I like them for their deep interest in motorcycling and their warmly extended friendship toward me and my co-workers. Curt is partly occupied as a very good evangelical minister, and over the years he’s led the concluding religious service at several of the Very Boring Rally events. (Thanks, Curt!) But despite our similar appreciation of high-quality rider’s gear, Curt and my individual consumption of motorcycling may be a bit different. For some reason, I project he’s a law-abidin’ luxury-touring type rider who enjoys the recreational and hobby aspects of motorcycling in ways I sometimes might not. If this is so (?) he’d fit squarely within the mainstream of American motorcycle riders.
Though we both enjoy riding for relaxation, travel, touring, and recreation, for about the last thirty years my core riding interest has been in daily commuting and utility transportation riding. I suspect this focus may produce a slightly stronger hooligan bias, thus, my near-unconditional support for lane-splitting and lane-filtering legislation.
Minnesota’s new law brings this state into better alignment with how riders in most of the rest of the world consume motorcycling. Done correctly and legally, lane-splitting and filtering make motorcycling through urban congestion situations far safer. The reason is simple: Riders today are being ‘rear-ended’ frequently enough and hard enough to cause serious injury whenever traffic slows unexpectedly. This is happening now due to increased driver isolation and increased driver distraction via popular technological advances like cell phones, complex ‘screen’ dashboards, and highly effective climate-control systems which allow a more comfortable and tightly sealed driver environment. Improved road designs requiring less driver attention is also a factor. This is an example of combined technological advances that are strongly desired by millions directly harming the minority. Legalizing lane splitting and filtering addresses the problem in a fair way.
Making lane splitting and filtering legal also influences a few road users to consider riding more, and driving less, which happens to be good for people individually and for civilization in general: physically, neurologically, sociologically, economically, and ‘psychobiologically’. This isn’t the place to go deeply into all that, but the scientific and statistical proof is out there if you are interested in looking for it. Riding more is good for you, and is good for everyone else, too.
One of my favorite thought experiments is to imagine if normal human reproductive behavior was done in about the same manner several species of spiders do it. Yes, I know people and spiders are very different, but indulge me…First, they mate, then the female spider kills and eats the male spider to help her nourish the tiny spider eggs she is making. If that was how we humans naturally reproduced (eeeewwww!), it absolutely would be universally legal. The best and most successful laws, both governmental and religious, always seem to sanctify and codify what most people naturally tend to do.
I know more than a few responsible and highly experienced riders will find the new law dangerous and threatening. We humans are a super collaborative species for a host of good reasons, and at the top of this list is because collaborating and trusting each other increases our individual chances of successfully reproducing and improves the odds for our individual long-term survival. We prioritize the benefits of collaboration, fill churches and sports stadiums, and make countries possible. I think of myself as a natural collaborator and am a ‘believer’ as much as anyone, but I also think many of our feelings, intuitions, and behaviors are what they are for reasons we can figure out. For example, laws reflecting a commonly held ‘moral compass’ are in place because such laws are useful. The devil and the divinity in them are always in the details because sometimes laws are partly built for the narrow benefit of leaders who, on occasion, may have questionable motivations, or who may hold underlying views about how human nature works that are inconsistent with the generally and broadly accepted reality.
With or without laws codifying it, lane splitting and lane filtering allow the operators of differing types of road vehicles to work more co-operatively so everyone gets down the road a bit more safely, a bit more quickly, and a good deal more easily. Long before the California law permitting it existed, lane splitting was what many riders there did naturally. It’s the same across most of the developing world, where no laws about this practice may even exist (yet…). Moving between and around less nimble vehicles is what most riders in most places naturally do. It will take road users around here a while to get used to those riders who choose to do this in congested situations.
- Mr. Subjective, July 1, 2025
PS - Bad hooliganism is a narcissistic form of sociopathic vandalism typically done by younger people experiencing a range of internal emotional and psychological struggles. Laws prohibiting this subset of riding behavior help reduce it, so such laws need to be in place. (Ask any former hooligan who somehow managed to survive their own adolescence.)
PPS – Here’s a link to a recent 12-minute YouTube documentary about how to improve freeway congestion in California, and here’s a link to another short YouTube documentary about how current road planning, engineering, law enforcement and road signage actually make highway safety and congestion worse, and how to make it better. It carefully diagnoses the causes of excessive road congestion and prescribes solutions, while completely and unfortunately ignoring incentivizing motorcycle and scooter use as a component of those solutions. If, after watching this, you can explain why incentivizing and increasing utility motorcycle riding isn’t on all public transportation planning radars, please comment below. The lack of consideration for any increased use of motorcycles and scooters is striking.
PPPS – Should you live in another state without legalized lane-splitting and filtering, watch this video about how to legalize it in your state:
PPPPS - My friend Gil, who lives and rides in Israel, read this blog post in draft form and wrote, ‘From one old hooligan to another: About lane splitting, in Israel it is the only way to move during rush hours. Traffic here is terrible, and when riding you must split lanes. However, when I use the car, it is terrifying to see the scooters and motorcycles rush by, and the word hooligan pops up. Use the right to split wisely. I’ve had drivers suddenly change lanes in front of me; I had a taxi driver open the door in front of me as I was coming to a stop light. Cellphone-using drivers will drift between lanes. It is a dangerous world.’ So, to all you new Minnesota lane-splitters, be careful.
Washington State Seattle full time rider, commuter, recreational, utility rider – no car. Lanes are smaller but I illegally lane split when the opportunity arises, always slowly and never above 30 mph. If cars would get the message with good preparation, I think it would work. It’s always appreciative when California plated cars move over at any speed to let you by. Thank you to those souls who understand this is NOT about competition getting somewhere sooner – It’s utilizing size to effect everyone getting there SAFER.
And also, with the new huge Tonka Toy sized vehicles where drivers can’t see over the hood, the space between cars stopped at lights is almost now EQUAL to the size of the cars! Such wasted space! I scoot into those spaces whenever possible trying to educate folks on giving those vehicles behind them respect to be able to pack the lanes fuller!
The underlying problem here in America, everywhere except California, is too few motorcycles-per-car in traffic. Outside of North America, nearly everywhere else (Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, etc..) has enough motorcycles in the mix so filtering and splitting is either explicitly legal or universally tolerated. We just don’t have the numbers here to achieve broad tolerance. Which sucks. But legalization is a small step in the right direction.
Lane splitting has had unintended consequences in AZ. On local / County 2 lane roads where speed limits are under 50MPH the law allows two vehicles to share a space in the lane (Lane Splitting). Issue is there may be a Sonoran Missile (Red light runner) speeding thru the intersection that a motorcyclist happens to be the first to enter from the opposing side. You don’t want to be the first to stick your neck out there. So no, I don’t use the lane splitting option.
Strictly first person singular.
Never ever in North America. Southern Europe alla damn time, yes. Sam taught me how to travel early ‘60s. Now deep into my 5th US passport. Cultural context is paramount. In a reptilian motor vehicle culture bicycles, motos, pedestrians, small things are snack food.
I bought my first motorcycle in 2005 to ride the 48 mile round trip to work in Southern California. It was a kawi klr. I learned more about defensive driving in the 8 years I commuted via motorcycle than I had ever learned driving a car for 20 years.
Lane splitting was something I did almost everyday, but I did it very responsibly, never exceeding 35mph, and constantly observing in front and behind for those whose dedication to highway safety is not so well developed. Stopping on a CA freeway in heavy traffic on a motorcycle is a very scary experience, with the feeling of impending doom awaiting a dozy driver to leave braking too late. That’s the entire purpose behind lane splitting, to keep motorcycle riders from becoming the filling in a steel sandwich.
There are downsides, though… irresponsible riders taking unnecessary risks, drivers taking out their frustrations with traffic jams on riders by narrowing gaps, opening doors, or unfriendly greetings.
I learned that the best way to stay safe on CA freeways is to simply stay away from everyone else…
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