OK, so everything below about this experiment not being extended is now NOT correct.
They have seen sense and decided to extend the experiment until 31st December 2024. When I guess we will probably be on this merry go round, again.
I do apologise for the scare, saying the rules had changed, but they had as far as I was led to believe. When I last checked, before the deadline they were still saying it was ending.
Then 2 days before the deadline they issued notification to extend the deadline, but I wasn't told.
I can only apologise again. I'm sure you can appreciate it's very difficult for me to keep up with all the rule changes.
Thanks must go to Trevor Hugh Baird, of Motorcycle Minds for letting me know via our Facebook page.
I'll leave the old incorrect information below as it may well be right again from 1st Jan 2025!
I will try to keep up-to-date with this story for you.
Read our full Rules Motorcycling in France page.
Motor riders were able to do this when 21 areas in France, including Paris, ran a trial to see if it would be safe for motor bikes while in congested traffic to move along the lanes between slow or stationary traffic congestion.
From now on motorcycle riders will not be able to weave between lines of cars and must stay in just one lane.
The trial was extended for a slightly longer period than originally planned but now there are no plans to extend it further, even though bikers loved it.
We now await a report based on the trial and to see if the law will be changed due to its findings.
I suspect though that it won’t. If they were going to allow it, surely, they’d have extended the trial?
They did a long trial before that ran from 2016 for 5 years, but the report didn’t provide any definitive conclusions.
It is the second such trial, and a report on the initial experiment which ran from 2016 to 2021 was inconclusive.
Police can issue €135 on the spot fines and endorse licences for 3 points but in truth it’s exceptionally rare that they ever enforce this law.
Unless you are riding way too fast for the conditions or doing something else that annoys them, I doubt very much you’d have anything to worry about.
Here is a list of the areas where the experiments are/were taking place.
Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Drôme, Essonne, Gironde, Haute-Garonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Hérault, Isère, Loire-Atlantique, Nord, Paris, Pyrénées-Orientales, Rhône (including the Lyon metropolitan area), Seine-et-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-d'Oise, Val-de-Marne, Var, Vaucluse, and Yvelines.
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