Michigan Lane Splitting Ban and the Unoccupied-Lane Exception

The prohibition and the permission live in a single sentence, and reading only half of it produces the wrong answer. MCL 257.660(5) forbids passing between lines of traffic, which is the manoeuvre riders mean by splitting or filtering: threading the gap between two columns of stopped or slow cars. What it then allows is passing in an unoccupied lane, on the left on a two-way street and on either side on a one-way street. The distinction Michigan draws is not between moving and stopped traffic, and not between speeds, but between a gap between lanes and a whole lane that has no vehicle in it. Riding up an empty adjacent lane past a queue is within the statute; sitting on the paint stripe between two queues is not.

The rule is not limited to motorcycles. Subsection (5) applies by name to mopeds, low-speed vehicles, electric personal assistive mobility devices and electric skateboards, so a Segway-style device or an e-skateboard on a Detroit street is bound by the same line. Subsection (9) carves out only one class of rider: the section does not apply to a police officer in the performance of his or her official duties.

Michigan is markedly friendlier on the related question of two riders in one lane. MCL 257.660(2) declares that a motorcycle is entitled to full use of a lane and that a motor vehicle must not be driven in such a manner as to deprive a motorcycle of the full use of a lane, then expressly withdraws that protection from motorcycles operated 2 abreast in a single lane and from a motorcycle interfering with a streetcar on a streetcar track. In other words the Legislature contemplated lane sharing and accepted it, at the cost of the full-lane entitlement while it is happening. MCL 257.660(3) caps the practice: a person riding a motorcycle, moped, electric personal assistive mobility device or electric skateboard on a roadway shall not ride more than 2 abreast, except on a path or part of a roadway set aside for the exclusive use of those vehicles. Three abreast is out even on a wide lane, and the streetcar clause is a live concern on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, where the QLINE runs in the traffic lanes.

A rider should also not expect a friendlier local rule anywhere in Michigan. MCL 257.660(12) hands a county, city, village, township or an entity created under the urban cooperation act the power to regulate the operation of electric personal assistive mobility devices, electric skateboards and commercial quadricycles by ordinance, and that list does not include motorcycles or mopeds. Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids can therefore restrict e-skateboards downtown, but no Michigan municipality has been given authority to authorise motorcycle lane splitting inside its limits. Subsection (13) goes further for two specific places, prohibiting operation of an electric personal assistive mobility device or electric skateboard in a special charter city and in a state park under the jurisdiction of the Mackinac Island State Park commission.

The Michigan State Police take the same reading. Their traffic law guidance defines lane splitting as driving a motorcycle between two lines of traffic travelling in the same direction, notes that it is most common when traffic has stopped for congestion or an incident, and states that the Michigan Vehicle Code prevents lane splitting in MCL 257.660(5), quoting the subsection in full.

The penalty is where Michigan parts company with most of the traffic code. 642(5), the marked-lanes rule, says outright that an individual who violates it is responsible for a civil infraction and may be fined as provided in section 907. 901(1) governs, and it is blunt: it is a misdemeanor for a person to violate this act unless the violation is declared to be a felony or a civil infraction. 00, imprisonment for not more than 90 days, or both. A lane splitting stop in Michigan is therefore a criminal charge in the district court rather than a ticket paid by mail, and it can support an arrest in a way a civil infraction cannot. 683(6). A crash while splitting adds an ordinary negligence exposure on top, because the manoeuvre is unlawful conduct rather than a permitted riding style.