Department for Transport assures MP it has no intention to make cyclists carry number plates and insurance

steaders1 wrote:

Remember though this is the govt. that regularly makes U turns

It's better to U-turn than stick to a bad idea. This is the preferrable option and shows that someone/something is open to advice and criticism.

It's better still to not publicise a shit moron-baiting idea in the first place.

It certainly seems to me that a cyclist travelling at 18-20mph will be perceived by pedestrians etc. as cycling recklessly fast, whilst a car on the same stretch of road travelling at 20-25mph will be perceived as travelling sensibly slowly. 

I don't know if it's a inherent trick of the brain (do smaller objects appear faster?) or simply a function of what people are used to seeing.

Leads to "Schrodinger's Cyclist" - simultaneously too slow and too fast. 

I holidayed in Devon earlier in the year. It isn't the distances between places or the terrain that make active travel impossible, it's the fact that the route connecting a lot of places is a national speed limit roads, with blind bends and dips (and motorists who are ignorant of both) and not so much as a pavement, let alone any cycle infrastructure - permitting motorists to travel at more than 20mph on these roads is the sole reason that active travel is a non-starter.

When I went to Cornwall with my family just before the pandemic, we took our bikes. But the narrow lanes and high hedgrows, not to mention the occasional local nutter in a hopped-up hatchback, meant we were very wary of cycling anywhere.

Living in cornwall it is sort of sad seeing all the tourists coming down with a family's worth of bikes on the roof knowing that they will likely not get ridden as going anywhere by bike here requires being fairly fit, fairly fearless and ready to stand your ground, not exactly ideal charateristics for a fun family day out. 

We do have a couple of decent trails in the bissoe and camel trails which are good for familys but the roads are pretty universally terrible. The only segregated cycle infra I can think of anywhere near me makes you give way 7 times to cars to traverse a single roundabout. 

it depends on the road and mix & volume of traffic, there are some rural country roads youd not catch me riding on at all I feel totally unsafe on them, there are others Im completely comfortable & happy riding on, both types of road have the same speed limit,bends,dips & hedges to contend with and Ive even ridden some of them in the total dark,no street lamps in the countryside, with nothing more than essentially a rear light protecting me.

and yet where is it I get most of my close passes and hassle riding ? its as soon as you hit a population centre and theres a volume of traffic to contend with. I can ride an hour in the countryside, barely encounter another vehicle and everythings great, hit a small market town and within 5mins I can be near knocked off multiple times by people in cars, most of whom could probably have used active travel options within that town, but wont, because every drives around them like they are insane.

so for me its not about the rurality, its about when you encounter a volume of traffic and those drivers suddenly get road rage on steroids.

Grant Shapps doesn't care.

I'm concerned about the damage it's done to potential cyclists too, how many who would have thought about getting a bike now have the impression that at some point in the not-too-distant future they're going to face an onerous licencing and insurance burden and think sod it, may as well have a car?

Absolutely. Shapps has dropped a bomb with wide-ranging ramifications, all for the sake of stirring shit and upping his own profile.

Just need to get in the comment section of those titles and say that cyclist number plates will be part of a new National ID Card scheme, and watch how fast the supporters change their mind.