Licence Plates

chuckcork

Dirk Van Gently wrote:

Motor vehicles have to be registered, and as I understand it the idea behind registering bicycles is to make the riders responsible, well it hasn't happened with motor vehicles has it?
every day I see speeding, RLJing, pavement parking, just generally inconsiderate driving, so registration is obviously not the issue, Lack of enforcement of the laws of the road is.

Fixed that for you.

Short of putting a policeman on every corner East German style I'm not sure that enforcement will ever be better, that would take road users accepting they are responsible for their actions and the consequences of their actions, police to be given resources to enforce it, and a willingness of politicians to allow them and the public to support that.

While the number of road deaths and injuries every year is a serious problem in the UK, not least the financial cost, it's a case of as long as it happens to someone else its not my problem. But the main problem is political, the lack of desire to tackle the issue. Just look at the statistics: 2,946 road deaths in Great Britian in 2007 including 646 pedestrians; while 658 murders in 2008/2009. Guess which attracts calls for action and gets front page in the press? Guess which gets an inside page unless its a multiple fatality involving children? (Adults don't count if children can't be linked into a tragedy in some way)

Given we can't even realistically expect our national leaders to accept responsibility for anything they do, and to act honorably when they've been more than caught out with fingers in the till as recently, why should the public really be any different and treat traffic laws with contempt?

secretsam

There are good reasons for it, eg policing, battering RLJ'ers with night sticks, etc

In practice - horrendous to administer, costly, complex, easy to evade, hard to police, would raise limited revenue. And would put people off cycling at the same time as there is a huge drive to increase physical activity.

Oh - and where the hell do you put a plate on a bike? Cars - easy; motorbikes - easy (they are wider); cycles - ????

Think we debated this at University (I studied Economics, including the economics of regulation) - and concluded there are easier ways to raise revenue and control behaviours.

dirk_van_gently

chuckcork wrote:

Dirk Van Gently wrote:

so registration is obviously not the issue, Lack of enforcement of the laws of the road is.

Fixed that for you.

Didn't need fixing.

bomberesque

roger merriman wrote:

waste of time, much the same as having a licence plate on a horse or just walking, cars/motorbikes are a lot heavier. and even fairly modest speeds can thus can do impressive amounts of damage.

ie the gain isn't worth the cost.

Probably right about the gain/cost ratio, a bit like saying "sure, register all bikes for VED ... oh, they fall into the zero charge bracket due to low emissions, well that was worth the cost of registering all of them then..". plus putting off teh casual once a month biker ... same arguement against helmet legis...... (sorry, almost slipped up there...)

The chinese seem to manage though (my bike had a license plate in Beijing way back when), but they have quite an ability with beaurocracy.

in principle I'm in favour of accountability. Unfortunately the only way there seems to be able to get this is through registration, which just wouldn't be very practical for the reasons mentioned (mostly volume of bikes).

I say do What the Dutch do; pass a law that effectively says "in the event of dispute without evidence, the car is wrong" and "in the event of dispute with evidence that the bike is wrong then the bike is wrong but the car still pays". That'll stuff 'em :twisted: