New Minnesota Motorcycle Law Seems Super Dangerous – But is it?

A few years ago I was in California.  I'm sure everyone has heard about the traffic on the 405.  It's infamous for having horrible traffic jams. At it's widest point it is 26 lanes.  But that wasn't even the part that was amazing to me.  The part that was crazy, and quite honestly kind of startled me, was the motorcycles running up the lanes of traffic between other cars and trucks.

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In California, and apparently also in Utah, Montana, Arizona and Colorado, it is legal for motorcycles to split or filter lanes in heavy traffic.  What that means is that a motorcycle can share space along side of another vehicle.  That is lane filtering.  So the motorcycle is not stopped behind another vehicle risking the chance of being rearended.  Of course, a car or truck could be rearended as well, but it's easier to see those vehicles as opposed to a motorcycle.

Lane splitting is what I experienced when on the 405 in California. (And also, why does everyone say "the" before a road name there?)  When traffic is stopped. or moving slowly, motorcycle riders can split the lane and move along side of other traffic.  All I think of is what if a driver of a car changed lanes, or moved a bit over and there happened to be a motorcycle driver there?  It seems extremely dangerous to me.  But it does seem to work in those other states. Now Minnesota will be included in that group as well.

Governor Walz signed the bill on May 24th, but it will not go into effect until July 1 of 2025.

There have been mixed reviews on this concept.  What are your thoughts?