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New Hampshire Is Considering Lane Sharing For Motorcycles


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Motorcycle lane sharing might finally come to the east coast of the US, with New Hampshire’s leaders debating the back-and-forth of this idea.

Currently, New Hampshire is one of the US states that explicitly forbids lanesplitting and filtering by motorcycles. In Section 265:121, the state’s official Rules of the Road say:

II. The driver of a motorcycle shall not overtake and pass in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken.
III. No person shall drive a motorcycle on a roadway between lanes of traffic or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles.

But the state’s legislators are now debating a bill to change this, and allow motorcycles to filter between lanes of slow-moving or stopped cars. Here’s the text of what’s proposed, according to BillTrack50:

II. “Lane filtering” means driving a motorcycle as defined in RSA 259:63, that has 2 wheels in contact with the ground, to overtake and pass motor vehicles stopped or traveling less than 10 miles per hour in the same lane and in the same direction, including on both divided and undivided streets, roads, or highways.

III. Lane filtering shall be permitted so long as the overtaking motorcycle operator does not exceed 20 miles per hour and conditions permit continued reasonable and prudent operation.

So: More or less what we’ve seen in other states that have recently legalized lane sharing—not full-on, high-speed lanesplitting, but running between traffic that’s basically at a standstill. Along with the legalization of lane sharing, the plan would also be to pump money into an education program so motorists know what to expect, and how to treat lane sharing motorcyclists.

You can see the House Transportation Committee discussing the bill in the video below, starting around the one hour, thirty-minute mark:

To summarize: There are opinions on both sides of the issue, but a rep from the State Police is very much against the idea. The staties say that with motorcycles accounting for 31.5 percent of traffic fatalities in 2023, in that state, lane filtering is too dangerous to try.

Perhaps the staties’ cries will take the win here, as lawmakers are often sympathetic to police officers’ concerns in these situations. However, with Minnesota recently legalizing motorcycle lane sharing and many other jurisdictions in the US debating the idea, there is momentum behind this movement. Perhaps, if the New Hampshire police are concerned about moto fatalities, they could ask lawmakers for a helmet requirement—or look at the accident stats of countries around the rest of the world, where lane filtering and lanesplitting happen every day.

Vezi sursa

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