PARIS: You're on a motorcycle and stuck in a traffic jam. There's enough space between the cars for you to nip past them all on the dotted white line between lanes.
Do you?
Not if you're in parts of the US or Germany, where precisely this manoeuvre - known as "lane splitting" - will get you a fine, and potentially even your licence revoked if you're a repeat offender.
Instead, motorcyclists are expected to behave like a car and only overtake as a car driver would and when there's a safe amount of space.
France, on the other hand, now wants to formally allow motorcycles and scooters to ride over the white lines between cars stuck in gridlock to get through the traffic jam.
Transport authorities here say they now want to trial allowing lane splitting on the city motorway for the next three years, following a similar move to legalise the motorcycle manoeuvre and free up traffic in the US state of California.
The new rule means that in 21 of Paris's departments, including the Paris metropolitan area, motorcyclists and scooter riders will be able to ride on the white lines between lanes on roads where there are more than one lane in each direction.
They'll have to limit themselves to a maximum speed of 50kph, and keep to the two left-hand lanes.
While this rule will doubtlessly cut time off a motorcyclist's ride duration and potentially also help reduce congestion, road safety experts are still unsure about what it means for safety.
The trial policy comes after initial tests over five years in 11 departments which led to unsatisfactory results, according to the French road safety organization.
Instead of reducing the number of motorcycle accidents by implementing clear rules for overtaking in traffic jams, the number of accidents in the test areas increased.
On average, they increased by 12 per cent there, while the number of motorcycle accidents nationwide decreased by 10 per cent in the same period. However, the road safety organisation pointed out during the evaluation at the beginning of the year that the cause of the accidents was not recorded in detail.
