Registration plates for cyclists

Jules Winnfield

Some woman who works for the Sussex police force (I think) wants to see cyclists with some sort of registration plate on their bikes so they can be identified if they run a red light or ride badly on the road. This was on the ITV news and of course they interviewed a few motorists and the reporter asked 3 motorists "Do you like cyclists?" Of course they all said no and the reasons given were..... They take up to much room on the road, they should pay for insurance and even one overweight bint said cyclists should pay road tax.

Err hello!

Cyclists use their own carbon footprint free engine to power their way from A to B. So why should we have to pay road tax. Morons the lot of them.

Sleeper Cell

Mod Edited we don't need language like that on here.

vimfuego

On the basis that at some point every type of road user has inconvenienced me - I hate everyone


Drivers, you own a car, not the road.

DavidJB

Unlikely to get both sides of the argument on a cycling forum.

MichaelW

taxi drivers: always stopping to let people in and out, why can't they just keep moving like normal drivers.
Delivery drivers, clogging up the road with all their "stuff" to deliver. If I want stuff I can drive to the shops to get it myself.
Refuse trucks, driving along at snails pace; why can't binmen run, it would help them loose their beer bellies. After all taxpayers we pay their wages.
I had to wait 5 mins for a minibus to deliver some children in fracking wheelchairs !!! Why can't the lazy little blighters walk to their car like the rest of us
I fracking hate people who aren't normal like me.

LegendLust

yet these very same motorists slow down and give horses loads of room and respect

cougie

That woman gets 85 grand a year for spouting rubbish like that.

Amazing - read the article here :

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... why-or-how

dodgy

LegendLust wrote:

yet these very same motorists slow down and give horses loads of room and respect

I suspect those same motorists are more interested in the safety of their paintwork than the horse and rider.

arran77

dodgy wrote:

LegendLust wrote:

yet these very same motorists slow down and give horses loads of room and respect

I suspect those same motorists are more interested in the safety of their paintwork than the horse and rider.

Exactly.

A horse will make a right mess of your nice shiny car if you crash into it whilst you'll barely notice when you crash into a cyclist.

team47b

Which is why horses should have number plates and be made to wear helmets!

And if pedestrians want to use the road they should too

ai_1

DavidJB wrote:

Unlikely to get both sides of the argument on a cycling forum.

You can definitely get both the cyclists and drivers sides on a cycling forum. Whether or not you 'll get both sides of a registration plate discussion is a different matter.

I cycle and I drive. Most adult cyclists are also drivers. Many are not, especially in urban areas but outside of cities the vast majority of recreational or compeitive cyclists also drive.
This is something a lot of drivers don't seem to realise. While most drivers are not cyclists, most cyclists are drivers. Those who do both really do have a better perspective on road safety, behaviours and problems than those seeing it from only one side.

Do cyclists cause occasional delays, inconvenience and frustration? Yes
Do some cyclists behave dangerously and/or inconsiderately on the road? Yes
Do some drivers often act recklessly towards cyclists either intentionally or unintentionally? Yes
Are drivers, in general, ignorant of the reasons cyclists act as they do (positioning etc)? Yes
Are all cyclists innocent of wrongdoing? No
Are all drivers ignorant, evil, morons? No

Like everything else, there's a broad spectrum of both cyclists and drivers. I get as annoyed by bad cyclists as bad drivers although as a cyclist I'm well aware how much more vulnerable the cyclists are when poor road behaviours end in an accident.

At first glance the idea of registration plates for cyclists is not obviously absurd to me. Other road users have them and I imagine a lot of the poor cycling behaviour is due to a lack of perceived accountability. However, with a small bit of thought it's easy to see that this is an unrealistic approach and one that really does head towards beauracratic nonsense. Would 1yr olds on tricycles in their front gardens need a registration plate? If cyclists need them then surely pedestrians should too...or at least if they want to cross a road anyway. The logical conclusion would be for everyone to walk around with an ID number displayed on their clothing or vehicle at all times..... No.
An ill-conceived, reactionary, populist suggestion likley to be embraced by those motorists not inclined towards thinking for themselves.

As cyclists, however, we would do well not to behave in the manner we criticise in motorists. Again and again I see comments from cyclists condemning all motorists. If you're willing to ignorantly tar all motorists with the same brush then you can't very well complain when motorists do the same. There is a minority of terrbile drivers and a minority of terrible cyclists. I hope I'm neither. I suspect a disproportionate number of the bad drivers are among those who condemn all cyclists and I suspect the same is true of the terrible cyclists. Every time I see a cyclist comment on how all drivers are evil morons or something to that effect, my first thought is that this cyclist is most likely an ass on the road.
Successful sharing of the roads will benefit greatly from some empathy. Both cyclists and motorists should endeavour to see things from the others point of view and behave accordingly.

cookeeemonster

Ai_1 wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

Unlikely to get both sides of the argument on a cycling forum.

You can definitely get both the cyclists and drivers sides on a cycling forum. Whether or not you 'll get both sides of a registration plate discussion is a different matter.

I cycle and I drive. Most adult cyclists are also drivers. Many are not, especially in urban areas but outside of cities the vast majority of recreational or compeitive cyclists also drive.
This is something a lot of drivers don't seem to realise. While most drivers are not cyclists, most cyclists are drivers. Those who do both really do have a better perspective on road safety, behaviours and problems than those seeing it from only one side.

Do cyclists cause occasional delays, inconvenience and frustration? Yes
Do some cyclists behave dangerously and/or inconsiderately on the road? Yes
Do some drivers often act recklessly towards cyclists either intentionally or unintentionally? Yes
Are drivers, in general, ignorant of the reasons cyclists act as they do (positioning etc)? Yes
Are all cyclists innocent of wrongdoing? No
Are all drivers ignorant, evil, morons? No

Like everything else, there's a broad spectrum of both cyclists and drivers. I get as annoyed by bad cyclists as bad drivers although as a cyclist I'm well aware how much more vulnerable the cyclists are when poor road behaviours end in an accident.

At first glance the idea of registration plates for cyclists is not obviously absurd to me. Other road users have them and I imagine a lot of the poor cycling behaviour is due to a lack of perceived accountability. However, with a small bit of thought it's easy to see that this is an unrealistic approach and one that really does head towards beauracratic nonsense. Would 1yr olds on tricycles in their front gardens need a registration plate? If cyclists need them then surely pedestrians should too...or at least if they want to cross a road anyway. The logical conclusion would be for everyone to walk around with an ID number displayed on their clothing or vehicle at all times..... No.
An ill-conceived, reactionary, populist suggestion likley to be embraced by those motorists not inclined towards thinking for themselves.

As cyclists, however, we would do well not to behave in the manner we criticise in motorists. Again and again I see comments from cyclists condemning all motorists. If you're willing to ignorantly tar all motorists with the same brush then you can't very well complain when motorists do the same. There is a minority of terrbile drivers and a minority of terrible cyclists. I hope I'm neither. I suspect a disproportionate number of the bad drivers are among those who condemn all cyclists and I suspect the same is true of the terrible cyclists. Every time I see a cyclist comment on how all drivers are evil morons or something to that effect, my first thought is that this cyclist is most likely an ass on the road.
Successful sharing of the roads will benefit greatly from some empathy. Both cyclists and motorists should endeavour to see things from the others point of view and behave accordingly.

Good post but regarding the last bit, I dont often see cyclists moaning about all drivers (for your point mentioned - it's actually 86% of cyclists that also drive cars) but I often see the reverse i.e. all cyclists jump red light, eat babies etc and so on. We're perceived as a minority that it's acceptable to pick on and so people pick on us (even though the vast majority of us also drive).

Also...99.99999999999% of all traffic offences (mainly speeding/not looking/mobile use and so on) are never punished despite registraion plates on cars (and the punishment is effectively zero even for killer drivers) so what problem is this gonna solve? one person a year is killed by a cyclist (some years none, and it's not always the cyclist at fault) and maybe a couple dozen serioulsy injured...compared to around 2000 dead and 20,000 seriously injured by motorised vehicles. They really want to spend millions setting this system up? Who's gonna pay for the extra congestion and health problems that results?

Any cyclist responsible for a bad accident with a ped is most likely gonna be thrown off the bike anyway and very possibly seriously injured - they wont be able to 'hit and run' in the same way cars do each day every day, so this wont solve that problem. And if they did? Bike theft is at far, far higher levels than car theft - it wasn't me guv, my bike got stolen...

cookeeemonster

and one further point. Insurance - which goes hand in hand with this argument - excess is on average far higher than the average sort of damage caused by a bicycle (though never in my life have I heard of a car being damaged by a bicycle, though every car owner I know has had damage inflicted by another car - often in car park hit and runs) so insurance wouldn't solve anything as the bicycle owner would most likely have to pay out of their own pocket regardless just as they would now if uninsured.

slowbike

CookeeeMonster wrote:

and one further point. Insurance

Insurance is just another safety blanket - we're generally so risk adverse that we must have insurance for getting out of bed in the morning.
I'm surprised that we don't insure our insurance ... oh we do ... well, the discount %age at least ...

I have to admit that I joined BC partly for the 3rd party insurance

il sole

As a relative newbie to cycling, I must admit I get wound up by both the highly righteous holier than thou cyclists and the brain dead moronic 'err, cyclists have no right on the road 'cos they don't pay tax' drivers. There needs to be more live and let live between the 2 sides, but alas this will never happen. All we can hope for is better education on both sides. This weekend I'm doing the New forest 100 - and I can feel the tacks being spread around now as I type!
Personally, I'm not averse to having some sort of registration for the bike, after all, it's a £5k machine and worth more than a lot of cars out there! Perhaps it should be compulsory to have some sort of insurance? I am with CTC for that reason. but then as someone said earlier, how do you decide which bikes to register?
But at the end of the day, cars and vehicles are now taxed based on emissions. So therefore the cyclist shouldn't pay anything (unless of course we had a curry the night before...barp!).
The whole driver vs cyclist debate is going to go on and on until the majority of drivers stop resenting cyclists being on the road.

Oh well, plus ca change!

slowbike

il sole wrote:

Personally, I'm not averse to having some sort of registration for the bike, after all, it's a £5k machine and worth more than a lot of cars out there! Perhaps it should be compulsory to have some sort of insurance? I am with CTC for that reason. but then as someone said earlier, how do you decide which bikes to register?

I am adverse to the idea of registration plates for the bike - we are on the road by right (along with pedestrians and horses) - motor vehicles are there by licence.

A registration plate would ultimately lead to bans - the only way to ban someone would be to remove their right to be on the road - and that would be for everyone, but they'd have to have a licence to remove to start with so we'd have to have bike licences - another reduction in civil liberty ...

There are plenty of motor vehicles whose drivers jump red lights and otherwise break the law - most of the time with impunity - I don't see how imposing the same restrictions on cyclists will have any positive affect. It would just be another "inconvenience the masses because of the few" laws....

Blummin stupid idea repeated by someone who can't get their resources to get off their backsides and actively police rather than reactively police.

damocles10

I used to have a BC licence (silver) and the insurance, which is needed for road racing, is very useful and can come in handy in the event of a crash on the public roads.

Uuumm as for licensing leading to bans.....I suspect, if enforced, the rider would need to be a serious repeat offender.

cedargreen

Some kind of registration scheme is long overdue, not for cyclists but for those seeking entry into positions of responsibility in public life.

ben@31

I thinking they should have registration plates for pedestrians, the f'ing w**kers with their carbon dioxide emissions and no tax or insurance. Some fit burd in a short skirt walked past me the other day and she almost caused me to strain my neck. I'm not happy at all... She cost me at least 2 seconds on Strava. She should be made to wear a helmet and high-vis bib tights like the rest of us.