Lane Splitting in New Jersey: No Authorizing Statute, Charged Under the Marked-Lanes Rule

The starting point is that there is nothing to permit. A full-text search of the New Jersey Revised Statutes for "lane splitting" and for "lane filtering" returns no section at all, and no chapter of Title 39 creates an exception for two-wheeled vehicles from the lane discipline that applies to everything else. Unlike California, which wrote an express authorization into its Vehicle Code, New Jersey has enacted no counterpart, and unlike New York, Texas and Florida it has also not written an express prohibition. The rule that governs is the ordinary marked-lanes section.

That section reaches motorcycles squarely. R.S. 39:1-1 defines "motor vehicle" to include all vehicles propelled otherwise than by muscular power, excepting only vehicles that run on rails or tracks, low-speed electric bicycles, low-speed electric scooters and motorized bicycles, and it defines "motorcycle" separately to include motorcycles, autocycles, motor bikes, electric motorized bicycles and all motor-operated vehicles of the bicycle or tricycle type. A motorcycle is therefore a vehicle for the purposes of R.S. 39:4-88, and subsection (b) is the operative sentence: a vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not be moved from that lane until the driver has first ascertained that the movement can be made with safety. Riding along the line dividing two lanes is not driving within a single lane, and moving repeatedly between lanes through stopped or slowed traffic is the movement the second clause is aimed at.

It is worth checking what the motorcycle-specific sections actually cover, because their catchlines are misleading. R.S. 39:3-76.5 is titled "Permanent seat; passengers; seat, hand holds and footrests; helmets; method of riding," and the "method of riding" it addresses is riding upon the permanent and regular seat, carrying a passenger only on a machine designed for one, footrests, handholds and a securely fitted helmet, with a fine of not less than $50 and not more than $100 for carrying a passenger in violation. It says nothing about lane position. R.S. 39:4-14.2, which does set a keep-right rule and a no-more-than-two-abreast rule, is written for bicycles, not motorcycles. So the absence here is provable from the structure of the code rather than asserted from silence.

The closest New Jersey comes to accommodating a rider in slow traffic is the second sentence of R.S. 39:4-85. If vehicles on the roadway are moving in two or more substantially continuous lines, the passing rules in that section and in R.S. 39:4-87 are not to be read as prohibiting the vehicles in one line from overtaking and passing the vehicles in another line, either upon the right or the left. Read carefully, that permits a rider who is in a line of traffic to pass vehicles that are in a different line. It does not create a line of travel between two lines, and it does not suspend R.S. 39:4-88(b). The same section adds two limits that matter to riders: passing on the right may be done "only under conditions permitting such movement in safety," and "in no event shall such movement be made by driving off the pavement or main-traveled portion of the roadway," which also disposes of running the shoulder past a queue. R.S. 39:4-85 was last amended by L.2014, c.69, s.6.

R.S. 39:4-88 also sets out the rest of New Jersey's lane discipline, and a rider is bound by all of it: normally drive in the lane nearest the right-hand edge or curb when it is available for travel, except when overtaking or preparing for a left turn; on a three-lane highway stay out of the centre lane except to overtake, to prepare for a left turn, or where the centre lane is allocated and signposted for your direction of travel. The truck restriction in subsection (e), which keeps vehicles of 10,000 pounds registered gross weight and over out of the farthest left lane on roadways with three or more lanes in one direction, was added by L.2013, c.86, s.1 and does not reach motorcycles.

S. S. 00 reserved for sections in articles 11, 13, 14 and 17 of the chapter. A splitting manoeuvre rarely comes as a single charge. S. 39:4-85, which forbids the movement except under conditions permitting it in safety and bars any pass made by driving off the pavement or main-traveled portion of the roadway. S. S. 39:4-86 governs overtaking and passing across marked no-passing lines. S. 39:3-79 does not apply to it.