Lane Splitting Can Kill You — Or Get You A Ticket. Your Choice.

In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2014 movie, Sabotage, there’s a scene where a motorcyclist is driving through New York City dodging cars and even driving between lanes of vehicles caught in a traffic jam.

For New Yorker’s it’s not just a good story. It’s a documentary.

Many developed countries have just a few vehicle classes on the roads, and many types of transport occupy the very roads as cars and trucks. The variety is big in India where over 40 modes of transport travel the same streets. New York City has five modes. In parts of America, a preponderance of movement is made up of two kinds of vehicles — cars and trucks.

When a motorcyclist, in real life, rides between traffic lanes, they are committing a two-point moving violation called “driving between lanes.” Creative, right?

No one is sure how many tickets NYPD issues each year for this offense, but it’s more than a few.

While driving between lanes may help in getting around, it is dangerous. A driver could change lanes into you; a parked driver could open their door and nail you. Motorcyclists driving between lanes travel within the blind spot of motorists and often has terrible consequences for the biker.

The tickets are often given to motorcyclists but also are issued to persons operating scooters, Vespas and other 2-wheeled vehicles.

While some states, think California, make it legal to lane-split as the cyclist weaves around and through traffic and avoiding gridlock, an NYPD spokesman claimed it wouldn’t happen in the city. Law enforcement has even tried shutting down I-495 on Friday’s. Many cyclists were not happy with the idea.

“Just to shut down a highway to watch for lane splitters makes it hard for many citizens,” one driver said. “It’s taking away my rights.”

Proponents in New York say they see lane-splitting working if motorcycles travel no more than 15 miles an hour faster than traffic stuck in the lanes.