Kansas Bans Lane Splitting but Lets Two Riders Share One Lane

Kansas answers the lane-splitting question in a single section, K.S.A. 8-1595, and that section does four separate things rather than one. Subsection (c) is the prohibition: no person shall operate a motorcycle between lanes of traffic or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles. The wording reaches both halves of what riders elsewhere call splitting and filtering. Between lanes of traffic covers riding the painted line between moving lanes; between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles covers threading forward through queued cars at a red light or in a jam. Kansas draws no distinction based on whether traffic is stopped, no speed differential, and no pilot program, which is what separates it from Arizona, Colorado and Minnesota, where a stopped-traffic filtering allowance sits in the paragraph immediately after the ban.

Subsection (b) is a second, narrower rule that riders often confuse with the first: the operator of a motorcycle shall not overtake and pass in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken. That bars squeezing past a car inside its own lane even where no lane line is being straddled, so a Kansas rider who moves up alongside a slow car within one 12-foot lane has broken subsection (b) whether or not subsection (c) is in play.

The counterweight is subsection (d), which is an affirmative allowance: motorcycles shall not be operated more than two abreast in a single lane. By capping the number at two, Kansas concedes that two is lawful. Two riders may therefore share one Kansas lane side by side, which is not permitted in every state and is the shape Wisconsin and Indiana also take. But the allowance is priced. Subsection (a) gives all motorcycles the entitlement to full use of a lane and forbids any motor vehicle from being driven so as to deprive a motorcycle of that full lane, and then withdraws that protection: this subsection shall not apply to motorcycles operated two abreast in a single lane. Pairing up in Kansas trades away the statutory claim to the whole lane. A rider traveling alone keeps it.

Subsection (e) exempts police officers in the performance of their official duties, and it names only subsections (b) and (c). A Kansas officer may therefore split lanes and pass within a lane on duty, but the two-abreast ceiling in subsection (d) still binds a police motorcycle formation, because (d) was left out of the exemption.

Who counts as a motorcycle matters here. K.S.A. 8-1438 defines a motorcycle as every motor vehicle, including autocycles, having a seat or saddle for the rider and designed to travel on not more than three wheels, excluding an electric-assisted bicycle or a tractor. Three-wheelers and autocycles are therefore inside the lane-splitting ban, and a rider on an autocycle is bound by subsection (c) exactly as a rider on a two-wheel machine is. K.S.A. 8-1593 supplies the framing rule: a motorcyclist gets all the rights and carries all the duties of any other driver except as provided in K.S.A. 8-1594 through 8-1598.

A violation of K.S.A. 8-1595 is charged as improper operation of a motorcycle on a laned roadway. The uniform fine schedule at K.S.A. 8-2118(c) sets that at $75 plus court costs, which is higher than the $45 Kansas assigns to the neighboring motorcycle offenses of improper seating or passengers under K.S.A. 8-1594 and helmet or eye-protection violations under K.S.A. 8-1598, and equal to the $75 for improper handlebars under K.S.A. 8-1597. It is a traffic infraction, so under K.S.A. 8-2118(b) a rider may enter a written appearance, waive trial and pay before the date on the notice to appear rather than attend court. The fine doubles in a posted road construction zone or school zone. A car driver who crowds a motorcycle out of its lane violates subsection (a) of the same section and faces the same $75 schedule entry.