Motorcyclists and scooterists in France will be taught how to filter through traffic, with official rules published by the French authorities.
If you’ve been keeping up with the latest rules and regulations in France, you’ll know that they’ve been testing legal lane-splitting & filtering for 5 years. That test ended in early 2021, concluding that accident numbers had risen so filtering was to be scrapped.
Riders weren’t happy, and the authorities decided they’d continue the study for another few years - until 2024. For those wondering, yes, riding through traffic has always been a thing in France - illegal, but police would just turn a blind eye.
There are 21 regions where the experiment continues: Bouches-du-Rhône, Haute-Garonne, Gironde, Hérault, Isère, Loire-Atlantique, Nord, Rhône, Var, Alpes-Maritimes, Drôme, Vaucluse, Pyrénées-Orientales and the Ile-de-France, and Lyon. Thank you RideApart for the list.
The Journal Officiel de la République française (or Official Journal of the French Republic) published a guide for riders, an excerpt from Moto-Station:
“Knowing how to practice inter-lane traffic in the departments where it is authorized on an experimental basis, if the traffic rules and the safety conditions as well as the learning situation allow it. In this case, learning insists on: the search for clues and the perception of risks, communication with other users, respect for safety distances, adaptation of the pace in particular according to the speed of the obsolete vehicles”
So with learners being taught how to properly (and safely) ride between traffic, and the whole experiment continuing until 2024, it’s looking like the decision has already been made to allow lane-splitting in France.
Not that it really matters too much, I can’t imagine any French riders would pay too much attention - riding in city traffic and not being able to navigate around traffic would be maddening.
Want more lane-splitting reads?
- France restarts lane-splitting experiment
- Lane-splitting and filtering - should it be allowed or not?
- How to safely filter and spot hazards
