The Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, recently mooted the idea of imposing tighter regulations on cyclists in the UK.
He raised the possibility of introducing registration plates for bicycles and insurance for riders, suggesting this would be an effective way of preventing the extreme minority of riders who break speed limits or pose a more serious threat to pedestrians and other road users...
Obviously this is a totally ridiculous, ineffective and unenforceable policy, it's such a bad idea even my Dad and I agreed on the fact this is nothing than a narrow-minded, shallow attempt to raise more money via taxation.
A terrible idea...
There is currently only one country in the world which forces cyclists to have registration plates - and that is North Korea. There are few other countries which have tried - such as some cities in America and in Fascist Switzerland but such policies have always been abandoned, because there are just so many problems with the policy...
Firstly registration plates need to be visible which means it's not practical to fit them to bikes, unless you have some kind of wearable vest thing with the 'plate' on which isn't going to be great in summer, or wearable over clothes in winter.
Secondly, if you're going to impose bureaucratic restrictions and insurance you are disenfranchising the poor from riding bikes as these are the people who generally struggle with forms and won't have the money for insurance - you know, the people too poor to drive cards!
Thirdly, what about children? You can't make 14-15 year olds get insurance, so are they exempt, but often look like they are older, so do we force children to carry IDENTITY CARDs to prove their age?
Fourthly, there are currently 1 million uninsured drivers in the UK - probably the problem cyclists this policy is designed to target would just remain uninsured themselves meaning the policy wouldn't be targeting those mooted anyway.
Finally, when similar policies have been tried in the past all they did was force people to stop riding their bikes, some of whom went back to car driving, and cars have far worse death and accident stats than bikes: in the UK cars are linked to 1700 deaths annually compared to 2 for bicycles.
So all this idiotic policy would do is take scarce police resources away from policing the real death machines (cars) and distract them by getting them to police cyclists, most of whom are no threat to public safety at all!
Postcript... it's maybe a policy from the Horsey-set, disgusting....
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Cyclists Welcome - you have just become the latest target in the culture wars