Bike Registration - angry motorists want this BS

Comment

Comment by Paul Martin on July 2, 2011 at 5:07pm

Great summary Ride2Wk.

Comment by Ride2Wk on July 2, 2011 at 4:41pm

Bicycle rego - Damn - how much for my hexacycle B-double????

Doc Martin you should definitly have rego on that "dangerous" high speed 3 wheeled Mango of yours. If you crashed it at 60kmh into a car it would scratch the Duco!!! :-)

Somewhere on my other computer I've got a lot of stuff I've put together on this previously. There's also some long winded stuff I've put onto Sydney Cyclist -

http://www.sydneycyclist.com/forum/topics/bikes-save-rta-0287-km-or

http://www.sydneycyclist.com/forum/topics/cycling-myths-debunked-cy...

 

They will take a long time to read so here's a couple of quick reasons against bike rego-

• Most roads are council roads. Rego DOES NOT pay for council roads - everyone's rates and developer contributions do. Cyclists pay rates just like everyone else through either direct home ownership or rent. So cyclists DO already pay for most roads even ignoring State & Federal taxes paying for State and Federal roads.
• How many motorists take down a car rego and report them to police for breaking road rules - very few. Really how many drivers are going to report bikes and how many cops have the time to waste on petty complaints. Try reporting a car for something and see how far it doesn't get you.
• Rego is mostly to keep control on DANGEROUS vehicles that kill 1,500 people per year. Bicycles kill how many other people - maybe 1 old pedestrian or another cyclist maybe once in about 10yrs. That's hardly enough reason for rego.
• Qld Transport reports that bikes save the community $0.60/km for every car trip replaced with a bike trip. They should be PAYING us to ride bikes instead of drive. In the UK bikes to ride to work are tax deductible!
• Alternatively twist that $0.60/km around and make it real user pays! I'll pay rego for bikeways on State roads (I've already paid for council roads in my rates remember.) when they start charging the drivers the REAL total cost of car driving. For the average 20,000km/yr x $0.60 that will be $12,000 / year thank you very much, rather than the tiny $600/yr (incl insurance!) rego and the $2-3,ooo/yr in Federal fuel excise depending on your fuel consumption. We'll also start taxing fatty food and Macca's for all the obesity related ilness etc etc. But where do you stop?
•  CARRS estimated that 5% of cars in Qld are unlicenced / unregistered and they are twice as likely to crash as legal vehicles/drivers. Bikes are only 1% of traffic. So that's 5x more illegal cars than there are bikes in traffic and the illegal cars are far more likely to kill & injure people and do serious property damage than a 10kg bicycle. They should concentrate on getting the dangerous vehicles off the road first.
• We know that Mandatory Helmets Laws, MHL, caused a 10-30% REDUCTION in bike usage. If bikes had to be registered &/or riders licenced, then most people wouldn't bother but would throw away the bike & never try it again. That would cause increased car congestion, increased health costs etc etc.
• Most places around the world including Australia used to have bike rego years ago but most have failed and been removed.

Comment by Paul Martin on July 2, 2011 at 12:45pm

BTW: this might be better as a Discussion under Advocacy or Policy, rather than a specialised group, Luke. That way people don't have to 'join' the group to comment. Cheers!

 

Comment by Paul Martin on July 2, 2011 at 12:44pm

It won't happen:

• based on vehicle weight, a bicycle rego would be about $2 per annum so it would be a joke, really.
• administrative costs wouldn't be covered by the fee
• Registration doesn't prevent car drivers from speeding, running red lights, etc
• What next? Pedestrian registration?
• Registration doesn't even cover the cost of repairing roads let alone building them. That comes from general revenue (ie. taxes) and we all pay those.
• The licence plate would have to be HUGE for anyone to take down the details.
• What of rental bikes, children's bikes, etc? Are we to expect them to be registered.

It won't happen. If it does, I shall ride around unregistered.

Comment by Luke Revolution on July 2, 2011 at 11:26am

City aiming to be America's most bike friendly hands out $400 fines for unregistered bikes

 

Link:

 

Councillors in Long Beach, California, are urging their colleagues to back the scrapping of compulsory bicycle registration in the city if it is to achieve its goal of becoming "the most bicycle-friendly city in America."
Not only are many of those who have taken up cycling in recent years unaware of the requirement to register their bikes, claim the schemes critics, but fines for failing to do so are disproportionate, they maintain, according to a report in the LA Times.

The mother of one teenage boy found out the hard way about the law, when her son borrowed a bike from his cousin and came home with a ticket for $400 because the bike didn’t have a bell and was unregistered.