Alaska Bans Lane Splitting by Regulation, Allows Two Abreast

Alaska splits the answer across two subsections of one regulation. 13 AAC 02.427(a) gives a motorcycle or motor-driven cycle the right to be driven upon a lane of a roadway and forbids any motor vehicle from driving so as to deprive it of "the full use of a lane." That entitlement is then traded away in the same breath: it "does not apply to motorcycles or motor-driven cycles driven two abreast in a single lane by consent of both drivers," and no more than two may share a lane at once. So two Alaska riders may pair up, but the pair gives up the statutory claim that a car must leave them the whole lane.

13 AAC 02.427(b) then does the prohibiting, and it does it twice over. The first sentence bars a rider from overtaking and passing another vehicle in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken. The second bars driving "between adjacent lanes or lines of traffic, or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles." That second clause is what reaches filtering. Note what is absent: there is no stopped-traffic exception, no speed cap, no speed-differential allowance, no limit to two-wheeled machines and no roadway-class condition. Alaska did not write a filtering pilot with conditions, as several states have; it wrote a flat prohibition, and it applies at 5 mph in an Anchorage queue exactly as it does at 55 mph on the Glenn Highway.

Subsection (c) carries the only exception in the section: the provisions "do not apply to police officers in the performance of their official duties," and even then a police driver is not relieved of the duty to drive with regard for the safety of all persons. There is no exemption for emergency medical or fire personnel on motorcycles, and none for parade or escort riding.

The statutory layer is genuinely empty, which is unusual and worth stating plainly. A search of the Alaska Statutes motor vehicle title for "abreast" and for "between adjacent" across AS 28.05, AS 28.15, AS 28.33 and AS 28.35 returns nothing. The Legislature has neither authorised nor prohibited lane splitting; the whole rule is administrative. 13 AAC 02.422 supplies the framing, providing that a person driving a motorcycle, a motor-driven cycle, or a motorized bicycle "has the rights and is subject to the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle under this chapter, in addition to special provisions in secs. 422 - 427 of this chapter."

That regulatory origin changes the consequences materially. AS 28.90.010(c) provides that a person convicted of violating a regulation adopted under Title 28 is guilty of an infraction punishable by a fine not to exceed $300, unless another law says otherwise. AS 28.90.010(d) adds that an infraction is not a criminal offence, cannot result in imprisonment, is not a penal punishment, and gives the cited rider no right to a jury trial or to court-appointed counsel. A single infraction also cannot by itself cost a licence, though points accumulated under AS 28.15.221 through AS 28.15.261 can. A rider caught filtering in Alaska is therefore in a very different position from one in a state where the same manoeuvre is a misdemeanor.

427(b) is written as a traffic infraction. 010(d) confirms that no jail term may follow, that the fine is not a criminal punishment, and that the rider has no right to a jury trial or appointed counsel. 261 can accumulate to that result. 142. Enforcement falls to the Alaska State Troopers and to municipal police. 1 traffic bail forfeiture schedule, so a rider can normally dispose of the citation by forfeiting bail instead of appearing.