Lane splitting and filtering officially became legal in the state of Minnesota as of July 1, 2025. For many motorcyclists, the news came as a relief, as it gave riders a new legal tool to avoid potentially getting rear-ended in stopped traffic situations. Not all motorcyclists agree on the move, of course; and for that matter, not all drivers agree, either. The same is true of most groups, on most things; you won't find that most opinions are universal across every single member of a given group.
Nevertheless, local Minneapolis TV news station KSTP wanted to report not only on when the new law first went into effect a quarter of a year ago, but also to follow up on how road users in the Gopher State have been adjusting to the new road rules so far. To do this, they did something that's sadly becoming more of a rarity these days, and went beyond merely quoting a press release to actually reach out to both a longtime local rider as well as to a representative of the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety.
Local longtime motorcyclist and scooterist Bob Hedstrom touted the safety aspects of lane splitting and filtering, and told KSTP that so far, he's only been honked at once while doing it legally on his scooter. He also added that so far, he hasn't personally witnessed riders being lane-splitting hooligans.
But the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety's Jay Bock said that he's seen both good and bad examples of rider behavior since the new law went into effect. The news station showed footage of one rider weaving in between lanes of traffic at highway speeds as an example, and advised riders to please not do this, as it's not how the law was written.
But overall, the Office of Traffic Safety says it believes that although it's spent $200,000 on public messaging to educate road users about the new law, there's still much more education to be done.
As a reminder, the state of Minnesota defines "lane splitting" as allowing a motorcycle to legally share a lane when passing a car going in the same direction, so long as traffic is not going faster than 25 mph. Furthermore, the motorbike must not pass at a speed faster than 15mph above the speed of traffic. "Lane filtering," by contrast, is defined by Minnesota to take place in a situation where traffic is completely stopped, and a motorcyclist carefully filters forward through traffic at a speed no greater than 15 mph.
Both lane filtering and lane splitting are still prohibited in certain restricted zones in Minnesota, including roundabouts, school zones, construction zones, and freeway on-ramps.
