Ah, the holidays. It's a time for family and friends, and a time for giving. Sometimes, even legislators like to get into the holiday spirit, and stick a tiny little bit of good news in their year-end stockings.
Take France, for example. Remember the ongoing lane filtering experiment that 21 of the 90-plus departments in the country have been running for the past four years? It's gotten yet another extension, so riders can still do it in 2025. (Cautious yay?)
For those unfamiliar, the original program started back in July 2021. The intention was to allow lane filtering for two-wheeled motorbikes (no trikes or sidecars) under very specific circumstances, and the effects on traffic and road safety were to be recorded and analyzed to determine whether full legalization was warranted.
Unsurprisingly, many French bikers have been on board with lane filtering for some time. When officials have threatened the ability to legally filter, they've protested in the past, and are not afraid to do it again if they deem it necessary.
Toward the end of 2024, Paris changed the speed limit for its notoriously congested ring road, lowering it from the previous speed limit of 70 kilometers per hour (just under 44 mph) down to 50 km/h. Under the rules of the lane filtering legislation, as currently written, this meant that the Paris ring road would no longer be legal to split on, and riders were not happy about it.
Unfortunately, the December 2024 extension of the lane filtering decree doesn't change the speed limit restriction, so that Paris ring road is still a problem. While it isn't perfect, riders in the departments where it's legal to lane filter will probably appreciate not suddenly having it become illegal as of January 1, 2025.
Yet, I can't help but wonder at what point the 'experiment' should be declared a success, and lane filtering simply becomes a regular, everyday thing that riders can do? Four years is a long time, especially in super congested urban areas like Paris. If there were major causes for concern, wouldn't they have turned up by now? Isn't it a lot of extra work to keep kicking the can down the road every few months, only to revisit the issue and come to the same conclusion?
Serious question: What's left to learn in this 'experiment,' anyway?
