Well, it appears that another life peer has staggered to his feet in the UK House of Lords to moan about ratbag cyclists and promote the idea of registration and number plates for bicycles. Chris Gerhard provides four good reasons why this is a completely daft idea and I like the first two particularly:
Consider the costs? There are about 30,000,000 bikes in Britain. Say it costs £10 to administer the registration. That would be £300M straight away. This is just so the police may be able to catch a cyclist jumping lights, something it is surprisingly easy to do now if they wanted to.
Consider the effectiveness. Number plates on cars don't stop them jumping lights or speeding so there is no reason to think this measure would be effective for cyclists.
I try no to sound-off on secondhand reports so I must admit that I haven't listened to Baron Howarth's argument (it's only available as a bloody Real Player file and I won't have that piece of crap on my computer) but I bet it included that old chestnut "cyclists don't pay their way". For the n^th^ time: that line of argument is dead , that is to say long dead. And the SMH article that pedaller ranted about today merely piles another stone on the sarcophagus.
Comments
Well, I don't know about the "rant", but thanks for the link. At least the article in the Herald has conceded that motorists don't pay their way either.