New York Bans Motorcycle Lane Splitting and Filtering

Article 34-A of the Vehicle and Traffic Law governs how motorcycles use laned roadways in New York, and § 1252 is the operative section. It opens with a right rather than a restriction: subsection (a) states that all motorcycles are entitled to full use of a lane and that no motor vehicle or motorcycle shall be driven in such a manner as to deprive any motorcycle of the full use of a lane. That is the provision a New York rider relies on when a driver crowds them toward the fog line or tries to share the lane.

The prohibitions follow immediately. Subsection (b) bars the operator of a motorcycle from overtaking and passing in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken, which forecloses squeezing past a slower car without changing lanes. Subsection (c) is the lane-splitting ban proper: no person shall operate a motorcycle between lanes of traffic or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles. New York wrote that sentence with no qualifier about speed or traffic conditions, so it reaches filtering forward between stopped cars at a red light on Queens Boulevard exactly as it reaches splitting at highway speed on the Thruway. There is no low-speed exception of the kind California adopted, and no pilot program.

What New York does allow is co-riding. Subsection (a) closes by saying the full-lane rule shall not be construed to prevent motorcycles from being operated two abreast in a single lane, and subsection (d) fixes the ceiling at two: motorcycles shall not be operated more than two abreast in a single lane. Two riders side by side in one lane is lawful in New York; a third rider joining that lane is not.

Subsection (e) carves out law enforcement. Subsections (b) and (c) shall not apply to police officers in the performance of their official duties, so a State Police or NYPD motorcycle unit may lawfully split lanes to reach a call on a stretch of road where a civilian rider may not.

The section applies statewide with no population bracket and no city carve-out, which distinguishes it from several other Vehicle and Traffic Law provisions that exempt cities of one million or more. Because a local traffic ordinance adopted under Title VIII of the chapter cannot permit conduct the chapter itself forbids, no village, town or county in New York can open its streets to lane splitting. The section carries a most recent revision date of September 22, 2014, so the rule in force today is the one that has stood for more than a decade.

Section 1252 supplies no penalty of its own, so the general rule in Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1800 applies. Section 1800(a) makes it a traffic infraction for any person to violate any provision of the chapter unless the violation is declared by the chapter or another law of the state to be a misdemeanor or a felony, and lane splitting is neither. Section 1800(b)(1) then sets the exposure for an infraction for which another penalty is not provided: a first conviction is punishable by a fine of not more than $150 or imprisonment for not more than 15 days or both; a second violation committed within 18 months of the first carries a fine of not more than $300 or imprisonment for not more than 45 days; and a third or subsequent violation, all committed within an 18-month period, carries a fine of not more than $450 or imprisonment for not more than 90 days.

Any police officer may write the ticket, and the § 1252(e) exemption is available only to officers acting in the performance of their official duties, so a rider cannot borrow it. A lane-splitting citation also carries a civil tail in New York: a rider hurt while violating § 1252 hands the other driver a comparative-negligence argument in the personal injury claim that follows.