Riding Skills & Safety Planning
Which Lane Should a Motorbike Use on a Wide Hanoi Road? Check Official Rules and Signs
About 7 minutes to read
Choosing a lane on a wide Hanoi road has an official text behind it, and on some roads signs and hard barriers set the answer. This article reads Article 13 of Law 36/2024/QH15 on road traffic order and safety as the national legal database shows it (the page lists the law as in force from 1 January 2025, updated on 29 March 2026), two Hanoi city portal items from July 2025 on separated lanes, a 2017 Ministry of Public Security answer, and news reports from September and October 2026. “What the pages leave out” lists what none of them settles.
Motorbike lane rules in Vietnam on a wide road: Article 13
The law defines a lane (làn đường) as a part of the carriageway divided lengthwise and wide enough for vehicles to run safely. Article 10 tells road users to keep to the right in their direction of travel, use the correct lane and obey road signals. Article 13, “use of lanes”, then sets four rules:
| Clause | What the text says |
|---|---|
| 1 | A vehicle moving at lower speed must keep to the right in its direction of travel |
| 2 | Where several same-direction lanes are separated by lane lines, stay in one lane and change only where allowed; move one adjacent lane at a time, signal first, and check the gap to vehicles ahead, behind and on both sides |
| 3 | On one direction of a road with lane lines, non-motorised vehicles (xe thô sơ) use the lane on the far right; motor vehicles (xe cơ giới) and special-purpose machinery use the lane on the left |
| 4 | On a lane reserved for one type or group of vehicles, drivers of other types must not enter it |
Article 34 sorts the vehicles. Motorcycles (xe mô tô) and mopeds (xe gắn máy: design speed up to 50 km/h, and either a combustion engine of 50 cm3 or less or an electric motor of 4 kW or less) are listed as motor vehicles; bicycles, motor-assisted bicycles (including electric bicycles) and cyclos are listed as non-motorised. Read together, clause 3 treats a motorbike as a motor vehicle, not as one of the non-motorised vehicles it assigns to the far-right lane. This is a reading: clause 3 does not name motorbikes or say how motor vehicles share several lanes on the left.
Signs, paint and which one wins
Article 11 lists the road signals in rank order for obedience: a traffic officer’s commands, traffic lights, signs, road markings, then posts, barriers and further devices. A sign (biển báo) therefore outranks paint on the road surface (vạch kẻ đường).
Reserved lanes: the law and a 2017 answer
Besides the reserved-lane rule in Article 13, clause 4, Article 33 adds, for riders of motorcycles and mopeds, a list of things they must not do; it includes riding abreast (dàn hàng ngang) and riding onto the part of the road meant for pedestrians and other vehicles.
The Ministry of Public Security portal carries an older answer to a question dated 28 November 2017. A rider on National Road 32 in Hoài Đức, Hanoi, reported being fined once for using the right-hand lane, which had a solid line, of the three lanes on the rider’s side of the road, and on another occasion for using the middle lane, and asked which lane is correct for a motorbike. The ministry quoted the lane rules of the time and the 2016 sign regulation: where a sign above a lane, placed at the start of the road in the direction of travel, reserves it for one type of vehicle, other vehicles may not enter, apart from priority vehicles. It did not name a lane for motorbikes.
Two multi-lane Hanoi roads with separated lanes
Hanoi’s Department of Construction (Sở Xây dựng) separated car and mixed lanes on two multi-lane roads in July 2025, according to the city portal.
| Road | Section named | Car-only lanes | Mixed lanes | Start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phạm Văn Đồng (portal item, 2 July 2025) | Hoàng Quốc Việt junction to the Ciputra urban-area junction, both directions | Two lanes next to the median | The remaining lanes on the pavement side | 4 July |
| Võ Chí Công (portal item, 9 July 2025) | About 4 km each way, from before alley 80 to before the Nhật Tân Bridge access road | Three lanes next to the median (the page also mentions four car lanes at the main junctions) | Two lanes by the pavement, for motorbikes, buses and other vehicles | 9 July |
Both pages say a hard separator divides the car lanes from the mixed lanes. On Võ Chí Công, the page adds that at main junctions such as Xuân La and Nguyễn Hoàng Tôn, motorbikes and bicycles in the two outermost mixed lanes move by the lights and signs, while a car in a mixed lane may only turn right. The Phạm Văn Đồng page also lists signs, paint, edge separators, reflective studs, guide posts and cameras among the works the department asked for.
What a police patrol found in October 2026
VietNamNet (14 October 2026) reports that the Phạm Văn Đồng separation, in place since 4 July 2025, was being enforced. A road traffic police team handled 10 cases in one hour on the section past Hòa Bình Park. One rider said: “I saw the sign and the barrier, but once I had gone in I could not turn out.” One rider received a violation record for not keeping to the prescribed part of the road, and the report puts the fine at 700,000 dong. An officer said signs and paint on the route are clear, and the unit planned more patrols and more after-the-event fine notices based on recorded footage.
When an adjustment changes the rule: the BRT lane
VnExpress (15 September 2026) reports that from that date Hanoi let all types of vehicle into the bus rapid transit (BRT) lane on the Láng Hạ – Giảng Võ stretch, both ways between No. 8 Láng Hạ and the Trần Huy Liệu junction, to ease congestion during overpass works. It describes the Kim Mã – Yên Nghĩa BRT line, running since early 2017, as having three lanes per direction: one for BRT and two mixed. The report does not say how the change is signed. Article 11 has a separate rule: where a fixed sign and a temporary sign at one spot mean different things, the law says to obey the temporary one.
A checklist drawn from the pages
- Article 11 ranks signs above road markings, so where the two disagree the sign comes first; an officer’s commands and traffic lights rank above both.
- Article 13, clause 2 says to keep to one lane, change only where allowed, and move one adjacent lane at a time with a signal.
- Where a hard separator divides car lanes from mixed lanes, the Võ Chí Công page names motorbikes among the vehicles for the mixed lanes, and the October 2026 report describes riders stopped for entering the car lanes.
- Article 25, clause 3 bars motorcycles and mopeds from expressways, apart from vehicles and equipment serving expressway management and maintenance. A page on this site is titled Hanoi Motorbike Routes in Google Maps: Check Expressways Before Riding.
Related reading on this site: Wet Road Markings and Metal Covers in Hanoi: A Riding Risk Checklist and Motorbike Safety Tips for Hanoi Traffic.
What the pages leave out
No page gives an official statement on which of several left-hand motor-vehicle lanes a motorbike should take, and Article 13 does not mention motorbikes by name; the reading above comes from Articles 13 and 34. The 2017 ministry answer predates the 2024 law and cites older texts. The current sign regulation was not read, so no sign numbers or pictures are given, and no page says which sign marks which reserved lane. No page gives the current fine table: the October 2026 report mentions one 700,000-dong fine and no legal basis, while the 2017 ministry answer gave 300,000 to 400,000 dong for a motorbike rider in the wrong part of the road or lane under the rules of that time, and no page explains the difference. The Võ Chí Công page is dated 9 July 2025, and no 2026 page read confirms that arrangement. The BRT item is a single news report with no end date, and the pages do not show whether a later notice changed it. No page covers other multi-lane Hanoi roads beyond those named above, names which Hanoi roads count as expressways, or mentions rented motorbikes.
Sources checked
- National legal database, Law 36/2024/QH15: text and status. vbpl.vn: Law 36/2024/QH15
- Hanoi portal, 2 July 2025: Phạm Văn Đồng lane notice. Hanoi: Phạm Văn Đồng lanes
- Hanoi portal, 9 July 2025: Võ Chí Công lane report. Hanoi: Võ Chí Công lanes
- Ministry of Public Security, question of 28 November 2017. Ministry: lane question
- VnExpress, 15 September 2026: BRT lane. VnExpress: BRT lane
- VietNamNet, 14 October 2026: patrol report. VietNamNet: lane patrol
Thuê xe máy Nguyễn Hà is open 09:00–21:00 daily at Ngõ 5 Nguyễn Văn Cừ, Bồ Đề, Long Biên, Hà Nội (near Gia Lâm bus station). Phone: 0334 699 969.