Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Should bicycles have number plates?
my wife told me that our youngest son was nearly hit by a
cyclist crossing Green Lanes at the St Ann's junction, an
elderly resident was hit a year or so ago, on the same crossing,
if you wait long enough at this junction it is a frequent occurrance.
There are many cyclists who do obey road rules, but being
patient at the lights could save a life, whether it be the cyclist
or a pedestrian, road safety seems to not be a priority for
policing, and there seems always an excuse not to do so by
the safer neibourhoods team, I'd understand if it wasn't their
remit. Benefits from cyclist registration system would be insurance
for cyclists, and possibly make bike theft more difficult to get away
with. Cyclist reg. may be another tax, the introduction costs should
be nominal as not to discourage the growth of cycling in London.
It could be argued that cyclists shouldn't pay anything, that the
GLA stump up for a registration system for the contribution cyclists
bring to the environment. Cycling is about freedom of movement
so greater regulation maybe seen as an affront, but more timely
policing is definitely required as part of regular duties.
I'd be interested on views on this either way.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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What about tricycles, monocycles, kiddies bikes, skateboards, wheeled shoes that kids wear, etc. Isn't it only vehicles with motors that must register ?
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Bicycle registration would be hugely expensive and unenforceable in practice. And car registration hasn't prevented bad driving, as far too many dead pedestrians, cyclists, passengers and drivers-of-the-other vehicle bear silent witness to.
I would rather put the time, money and effort into policing and enforcing standards of driver behaviour. The drivers of motor vehicles are slaughtering more people every day than have been killed by pedal cyclists in a year, then drivers are aquitted because lapses in concentration while piloting a lump of metal at speed are somehow acceptable. Imagine if we took the same attitude with surgeons or airline pilots or evenschool dinner ladies! The culture that people can't really be expected to stay in control of their cars has to change.
As to anti-social cycling, apart from enforcing the existing laws (but not at the cost of diverting resources from enforcing those same laws for motor vehicles - address the most resources to the biggest dangers) we should deal with it the same way we should, but sadly don't, deal with any anti-social behaviour. Don't engage with it. Don't help rationalise it, even to argue against it. Treat the red light jumper and the over-11 pavement cyclist with the same disgust you would treat someone defacating in the street. Don't say "all cyclists do X" or even "too many cyclists do X" because that implictly sends a message that cyclists do do X. You want to send the message that no rational civilised human does X! After all, 30 years ago drunk driving was socially acceptable.
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If you hit someone with a car bumper and kill them you'll get 15 years (or whatever) but if you attach that same piece of metal to a car and hit the same person, killing them, you'll get 3 years at the most.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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" 30 years ago drunk driving was socially acceptable. "
No it wasn't. I started driving in 1966 and drink driving was regarded as a disgrace then.
But, more to the point. Belgium had a system of bike registration in 1974 and I assume still does. Every bike had to bear a number plate and the cost was negligible.
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Drunk driving was possibly the wrong phrase. I am sure no one thought driving while unsafe to drive was acceptable. However the standards of "unsafe" have definitely changed. I know plenty of older folks who back inthe 70s considered it safe to drive after three or more pints. Outside rural areas I dont think anyone would find that socially acceptable today.
The cost of bike registration will be to retro-fit the millions of bikes already owned in the uk, and to manage a unique number for all new bikes. And that is just the bike id. If you want to link that to an individual rider, not forgetting to manage multi-bike owners, shared family bikes, second hand bikes, bikes lent to friends, bikes built from old parts, frame replacements etc etc the cost will be huge. If you think you can do that for negligible cost frankly you are wasted on bike registration, I'd much rather you got stuck into the NHS reorganisation!
I am interested in your comments on Belgium. I have had a quick google but can't find anything on this at all - have you got any more details? All I can find are vintage license plates for sale and posts on vintage bike forums which suggests it is no longer required.
(I do see that Belgium has presumed liability laws, where the pilot of the larger vehicle has the greater duty of care and is therefore presumed liable for accidents unless the pilot of the small vehicle is shown to be at fault. I would be happy to follow Belgium's lead there, and it would give pedestrians greater comeback against both drivers and cyclists)
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I've actually been hit in addition to the near misses. I was on the pavement - so was the rider - and it hurt! He didn't stop, or even look back; it was lucky I'm not frail or elderly.
So I'm very keen on the idea that all cyclists should be registered and display a number. It should preferably not be on their machines but rather on their backs where everyone could see it, especially in the situation where a rider is fleeing the scene of their dastardly deed!
I think cycle insurance should be encouraged but I don't think it should be made compulsory as it is for cars. The potential a cyclist has to cause damage to property, fire, injury or death, far in excess of their means to pay, is just not of the same order. Anyway, if the people responsible could be identified and have claims lodged against them, I'm sure they would behave themselves much better and cycle insurance would become very popular too.
Oh, and of course there would be lots of lucrative contraventions the Council could fine them for.
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You will just end up with fewer people on bikes and more in cars. Instead of reducing danger you will increase it.
I know it doesn't feel like that when a selfish **** on a bike barrels past too close or even hits you, but far more pedestrians are killed on pavements and verges by motor vehicles than by bikes. (In fact the TOTAL number of pedestrians killed by bikes in the UK is in the order of 1 or 2 a year, while for motor vehicles it is more like 3-600, with about 40 being on pavements or verges)
No one is saying we should condon or accept bad cycling, but don't let the new visibility of dangerous cycling divert attention from the familiar but far greater danger of dangerous driving.
If you'd been hit by a car rather than a bike you might not have been here to tell us about it.
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I should have added that it wasn't a cycle lane - he suddenly appeared in front of me at speed on the pavement from behind a parked vehicle; I froze and he barely avoided a head on collision. If I had been one or two paces ahead I would have been seriously hurt; an older person or a child might have been killed. But in all my life (nearly half a century of it) I've never seen anything similar happen with a car.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Of course more people are killed by motor vehicles; that's just because there are so many of them compared with cycles not because they're more dangerous, necessarily.
And there's no reason why a registration scheme would cost cyclists more than a nominal fee so it shouldn't act as a deterrent. I think that everyone would actually benefit including some cyclists put off from sharing the road with others who ride recklessly.
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Are you seriously suggesting being hit by a motor vehicle and a bicycle is equally dangerous? Tell you what, I will stand in front of a bike being ridden at speed and you stand in front of a car being driven at speed. Let's see how that works out ;)
But even if it was just a numbers game, surely thats even more reason to focus on the big numbers first.
The cost to the cyclist, whether nominal or not, is a red herring. That's just about how much the cyclist pays vs how much the public purse pays. The point is the total cost of the scheme is going to be huge. Who will enforce it? Who will make sure the backlog of existing bikes are registered? Who will catch cyclists on non-registered bikes and register them, and if we have the resources to do that why not just use them to catch red light jumpers and pavement cyclists in the first place?
To make licensing increase cyclist accountability you would need to do all these things, otherwise it's just tokenistic window dressing to reassure the public that Something is being Done.
Whereas focussing on road safety as a whole, focussing effort on the biggest dangers first, not only reduces the danger from motor vehicles but also from cyclists. Cyclists don't want to be on the pavement, they are there out of fear and ignorance. That's what you need to tackle.
The badly behaved cyclists are in my experience the badly skilled cyclists. Few of them would agree...the red light jumping roadie mamil I am sure sees himself as the urban fox cutting through the city. But after a while most of us realise that riding as part of the traffic is much safer and less stressful than dipping in and out, and riding on the road is far less hassle than trying to manoeuvre between pedestrians. So the way to get what you want is not new laws for cyclists, it's a mixture of enforcing the existing ones for everyone plus increasing public (driver as well as cyclist) awareness of what good, safe cycling looks like.
A big push media campaign implying adults who jump lights or ride on pavements are figures of fun and pity who can't cope with big boy roads and would be better off on plastic tricycles with stabilisers would have far more effect than mandatory licenses.
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I'll answer you point by point:
I was never comparing being hit by a motor vehicle with a knock from a cyclist but simply criticizing your statistical analysis of the frequency of fatalities. However, you raise an interesting point. I would think collisions with motor vehicles are certainly potentially more damaging but this depends very much on the type of vehicle & its speed. Expect to die if you're hit head on (even relatively slowly) by a lorry or bus or go under their wheels. A huge 4x4 wouldn't do you any favours either. But if we're talking about the average private car it's rather a different matter. They are now designed to minimize injuries when in collision with pedestrians/cyclists with softer, sloping bonnets and bumpers which, I believe, means that @ 20 mph, the speed limit likely to be imposed soon across the borough, survival is the overwhelmingly likely outcome often with no serious harm. I think I might find it hard to choose between car or a cyclist to be hit by @ that speed.
I don't see big numbers with the cost of a scheme needing to be huge. It's the rider who needs to be registered - it doesn't need to be a tax on every bicycle akin to a tv licence with bicycle inspectors raiding homes which, they suspect, harbour unlicenced machines (I agree registration would, in effect, be a licencing scheme). I have a fishing licence which cost me £27 & the Environment Agency apparently make a tidy profit out of them; so surely cycling licences could be cheaper and still cover the administration cost. Of course there would also have to be a points and appeals system with regard to contraventions but this would probably be offset by penalty charges - you only have look at parking enforcement to see how these can generate a healthy "surplus" but I would wish something much fairer and less draconian for cyclists.
Regarding enforcement: Its obvious that most contraventions would need to be captured on camera and this might not be very difficult. The main problem would be the apprehension of riders failing to display their number (this would probably need to be a criminal offence) and this is a job the Police would be doing rather than catching the red light jumpers & pavement cyclists who would now be more easily caught by cameras. They would also have to make random stops to deter people from using a false or forged licence. I admit all this isn't simple but it's easily possible as it would be similar what's already being done with motor vehicles.
The only insurmountable problem would be mass disobedience by cyclists refusing to register.
You are right to say that we should focus on road safety as a whole and, to my mind, the key to this is respect & cooperation between all road users. Politeness & consideration for others is, of course, impossible to impose but a cyclist licencing scheme would, at least help reduce the resentment felt by many drivers when they see "it's one law for them and another for us".
Your criticism of the bad cyclists is exact, and I'm so glad to know your not one of them. I have cycled quite a bit myself, and still do occasionally also trying to "ride as part of the traffic", and usually avoiding cycle lanes especially as I got more punctures there!
Perhaps a media campaign would be worth a try, but I have my doubts. Campaigns of the past often got things started but they then needed laws and finally enforcement to back them up, and it was the threat of penalties which finally ensured mass compliance. Drink driving & seat belts are good examples. With cycling the existing laws would be sufficient if only there was a real threat of offenders being caught and subject to a penalty.
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Without statistics all you have are anecdotes. You are welcome to grab the raw data from the ONS website and produce per mile, per journey or per journey-hour comparisons if you feel that is a more valid approach. Nothing is going to show you bicycles are ore dangerous than motor vehicles. More at risk, yes, but not more dangerous.
At the end of the day you could ban bicycles from the road completely and the impact on all classes of road casualty other than casualties of cyclists themselves would be minimal, so it seems perverse to focus attention on risky behaviour by cyclists when badly driven motor vehicles are causing so much more damage.
On the practicalities of registration, I think you will find the cyclists who happily license themselves are not the ones who jump lights and ride on the pavement so you won't gain anything at all, just a whole load of admin cost. And I am not sure what your point about registering cyclists not bikes is - are we all going to wear t-shirts with barcodes or something? The original suggestion was to have reg plates on bikes, which does mean you need a database to link bikes and riders, to manage second hand bike sales etc.
Finally the media campaign. There has sadly been one very successful such campaign which without any legal backup, but a lot of support from the motoring lobby, has managed to effect real social change. That is the campaign to convince people that bicycle safety is nothing to do with road design, driver awareness or cyclist behaviour, but instead begins and ends with a styrofoam hat.
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But you don’t have any real “statistics” either to compare cycling with driving! For the obvious reason that cycles are not registered like motor vehicles are and their mileages are not recorded in the same way. There is no comparable data; it can only be guesswork. And I never suggested that cycles were more dangerous. And of course their riders in styrofoam hats are at much more risk than someone securely belted into a steel cage; a fact which, with regard to safety, must help swing the argument in favour of motors.
But I agree that even a small car has the potential to cause vastly more damage than a velocipede; that’s why I don’t think compulsory insurance is appropriate for cycle riding. But this was never a car versus bicycle issue.
The point is that the bad behaviour of cyclists has become, at the very least, a terrible nuisance which people are now heartily sick of. At least something is in place to help reduce bad driving and much more could & must be done. But, at present, cyclists are flouting the law practically with impunity. If, as is hoped, many more people take to the saddle the situation will become yet more intolerable and there is a risk that politicians will bring in some draconian, ill-thought-out solution as a knee jerk reaction; cycle registration was mooted by Ken Livingstone a few years ago. Far better that ideas for some system should come from those cyclists, who would be happy to be registered, but it would, of course, need to be compulsory for all.
The reason I say register cyclists not bikes is that I think the only purpose of a scheme should be to make each rider accountable for his actions. His machine is irrelevant. Any scheme should be as simple as possible & not intended to ape the regime for cars and include an equivalent of the MOT, compulsory insurance, points for defective tyres, road tax etc. as some motorists vindictively suggest.
There’s no getting around the need for something to be displayed for camera enforcement though. It could be clipped to the bicycle, or stuck on the rider’s helmet, or worn on a high visibility sash or maybe a combination of these; no doubt other alternatives could also be devised if necessary. All cycle racers show a number which is clearly visible and it doesn’t seem to be an encumbrance or hinder them in any way. I just can't see a real practical problem with this.
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