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.

And Buying a Powerball Ticket. Good luck or bad luck supposedly comes in threes so I’m today buying a Powerball ticket for the first (or possibly second?) time in my life. I’m feeling lucky because this week Minnesota unexpectedly became the sixth state in America to formally legalize lane splitting. Separately, another bit of possible good luck may be about to happen at Aerostich (which will be described a little further below). That makes two. Perhaps a lucky Powerball number is out there waiting for me. How could it not be? There is a terrific story about how this new Minnesota lane splitting law suddenly became reality and it will soon be told elsewhere, but for now, a simple explanation is the planets all aligned and a few Minnesota riders in key legislative and leadership positions saw the opportunity and acted quickly, doing all the right kinds of things at exactly the right time. So beginning on July 1 of 2025, all motorcycle riders in MN will be able to filter through congested traffic as if they were riding bicycles. It will take years before many Minnesota drivers become comfortable with motorcycles filtering around them in congested traffic. To begin familiarizing them Minnesota is planning PSA announcements and other kinds of public information and education programs between now and next July. Essentially only two elements are involved: 1.) In congested areas worldwide the operators of smaller nimbler vehicles have always naturally and safely filtered through the interstices between the larger and clumsier vehicles. This is why lane-splitting is legal or well-accepted just about everywhere in the world except America. Millions of riders across the planet safely do this every single day, especially through the most road-congested densely populated cities in ‘developing’ areas throughout Asia, Africa, and South America. 2.) Only in America did almost everyone go right to cars, because a 1916 Model T automobile cost about the same as a 1916 motorcycle. People could get four wheels or two wheels for the same price, and everyone then in the market for wheels chose the Ford. This happened across America, and nowhere else. Since then, most bikes designed, manufactured, and marketed in the United States have been consumed as sport and leisure vehicles. Bikes became societally marginalized as leisure toys and sporting machines, and riding them came to be identified with rebellion, recreation, and sport, not useful utility transportation. Our unique moto-history continues to influence how motorcycling in America is understood and consumed, which is why there are so few motorcycle commuters and utility riders here today. But globally motorcycles are a well-established economically proven safe way to reduce road congestion, improve society, and place a lighter footprint on the earth. Very significantly, the behavioral differences between typical utility riders and recreational riders are immense and consequential.  People riding mostly for sport and recreation are far more likely to ride in ways that are unsafe, and those who ride for utility transportation tend naturally to ride as safely as possible. This is why lane splitting tends to be far safer than most Americans think it is. The second bit of potentially very good luck which came Aerostich’s way earlier this week is a lot simpler to explain. After fifteen years of fruitlessly trying to persuade the YKK zipper company to develop a slightly stronger and slightly easier-to-handle version of the main entry zipper in Aerostich suits, it looks like this may finally be happening. The zipper we’ve been using for about the past fifteen years is the very best available from any zipper company I am aware of, and it has worked extremely well for about 97% of our customers, but it isn’t quite perfect. Our long-time YKK zipper sales rep just sent me a photo of a new model that looks good. A sample of this zipper should show up on my desk next week. If it does work for us (?), then several months from now all Aerostich suits will begin to come with this new zipper and we’ll probably also figure out a way to offer it as a replacement upgrade to those with older Aerostich gear. Hopefully, I’ll soon be sending a bottle of fancy whiskey to our YKK zipper rep along with a sincere thank-you note. Good luck (and trouble) supposedly comes in threes. This afternoon I’m buying a Powerball ticket. Mr. Subjective, May 24, 2024. PS – Unfortunately, after writing this blog post, the ticket I purchased (shown here) had only one matching number. So maybe the old saying about ‘luck (or bad things) coming in 3’s isn’t as quite true as people believe. Or maybe some other good thing will still happen? Or maybe the new zipper won’t work out? Or? This is the photo of the possible new zipper: Here’s the text of the new Minnesota lane splitting law: PPS -- Also, unfortunately, when the possible zipper solution arrived, it won't work for us. But we'll keep trying.