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news
Grant Shapps TV interview (public domain)Confusion as Grant Shapps now says he is "not attracted to bureaucracy" of number plates for cyclists
Confusion reigned this morning as transport minister Grant Shapps' comments in an interview given to The Times appeared to contradict his widely-reported pledge to enforce tougher rules, namely possibly introducing number plates for cyclists, as part of the current legal review.
> Grant Shapps: Cyclists should have number plates, be insured and subject to speed limits
Speaking to the national newspaper, the Tory cabinet minister said: "I'm a keen cyclist, I'm very proud of the big expansion in the number of miles being cycled. I'm not attracted to the bureaucracy of registration plates. That would go too far."
These comments, published in a story on the front page of The Times, contrast with Shapps' interview simultaneously published on the front page of the Daily Mail, in which he says he "absolutely proposes extending speed limit restrictions to cyclists" before stating: "That obviously does then lead you into the question of 'well, how are you going to recognise the cyclist, do you need registration plates and insurance and that sort of thing?'"
Wednesday's Mail: Cyclists May Need Number Plates #TomorrowsPapersToday #DailyMail #Mail pic.twitter.com/xwsJplT1sW
— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) August 16, 2022
The Mail interview prompted something of a media frenzy, with talk shows, news outlets and social media filled with debate about the prospect of cyclists needing a number plate to use the roads.
road.cc contacted the Department for Transport for clarification on the matter and were told: "It's just proposals. No new policy has been introduced as of yet. The Times piece is the more accurate reflection of the Transport Secretary's view. That's his position on it."
The Department for Transport is likely to clarify the position further in the coming hours.
Speaking to the Mail, Shapps said: "Somewhere where cyclists are actually not breaking the law is when they speed, and that cannot be right, so I absolutely propose extending speed limit restrictions to cyclists.
"Particularly where you've got 20mph limits on increasing numbers of roads, cyclists can easily exceed those, so I want to make speed limits apply to cyclists.
"That obviously does then lead you into the question of 'well, how are you going to recognise the cyclist, do you need registration plates and insurance and that sort of thing.
"So I'm proposing there should be a review of insurance and how you actually track cyclists who do break the laws [via identifiable markings].
"I don't want to stop people from getting on their bike, it's a fantastic way to travel, we've seen a big explosion of cycling during Covid and since, I think it has lots of health benefits.
"But I see no reason why cyclists should break the road laws, why they should speed, why they should bust red lights and be able to get away with it and I think we do have to not turn a blind eye to that and I’m proposing setting up a review to do exactly that."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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92 comments
One point in the argument about speed limits for bicycles that I haven't seen made is that it could actually encourage cyclists to put themselves in more danger to make sure they don't break the speed limit. We all know that the average cyclist doesn't tend to carry a speedometer, and so the temptation will be to slow down well below the speed limit to ensure that they don't get a ticket. This in turn will inevitably lead to more frustration and close passing from drivers who will be able to see what speed they're doing. I hate to think how the snarling, hooting drivers I sometimes have following me when I'm riding at the 20 mph speed limit on my local roads (where due to parked cars both sides it is often impossible to pass) would react if I started carefully dawdling along at 15 mph or lower to make sure that I was within the limit.
Although if cyclists did have limits, then they would also be forced into buying and fitting a calibrated and accurate speed measuring device. I'm sure Grant won't have already invested in firms selling those things beforehand though.
Look for a kickstarter under one of his alter-egos.
Although if cyclists did have limits, then they would also be forced into buying and fitting a calibrated and accurate speed measuring device
These, of course, already exist and are highly accurate when calibrated against GPS, and are more accurate than car speedos even when simple measurement of the tyre circumference is performed. However, it is axiomatic for the police that cyclists are always travelling at less than 10 mph, which is why it is always legal to cross unbroken white lines to overtake them. Therefore, the police will be forced to simultaneously decry cyclist rev/counter or GPS speedos as worthless junk and therefore legitimising DWL crossing motorists, while simultaneously approving them for the purpose of prosecuting cyclists. These double standards come naturally to the police
I'd say that:
1 - Shapps is an ignorant tosspot (we all know that),
2 - he has just had previous work proving that his ideas are BS pointed out to him by a Civil Servant,
3 - he has been hit over the head with a cluebat containing a 6 inch nail long enough to penetrate his thick skull,
4 - he is now desperately back-pedalling to preserve a credibility that
5 - he is too stupid to realise that he does not possess.
Shapps really is a knob
If it's really him, his Strava profile has 31 rides. Ever. "Keen cyclist?"
Could be; I have none.
HERETIC!
But have you checked his other accounts? He's well-known for making up multiple identities.
please, Liz can I have a cabinet role - I met the 3 criteria of being (i) "tough" (ii) wrong about everything and (iii) not focused on anything that actually matters
The intent seems to be that cyclists aren't above the new default 20 mph speed limits. Cool? Is the enforcement then the same as it was with driver speeding before speed guns came along?
What type of speedometer, with what accuracy will be required?
I mean the fundamental point on cyclists speeding is surely one of physics.
Let's assume we're on the flat - the typical cyclist plus rider that can "easily" go faster than 20, might be 75kg and one a 10kg bike (so definitely not a climber of riding a top end bike, or even a carbon road bike but lets stick to these for round numbers), so 85kg.
20mph is 8.94 m/s (again lets say 9, this goes against the cyclist and makes the maths easier).
KE = 1/2 MV^2
KE = 0.5*85*81 = 3.44 kilojoules.
Now for the car, lets run it for a '22 mini (curb weight 1275kg) - lets all the fuel passengers etc. are freakisly light and call in 1300kg all-in (it has a gross weight of 1640kg which is far more likely to reflect the rolling weight of this bad body in the real world).
So applying the same maths:
KE = 0.5*1300*81 = 52.65 kilojoules
So at the same speed the car (even a relatively small one) in a 20 would have roughly 15.3 times the energy of the cyclist. To put that into context - comparing the car doing 20 to the bike doing 20 is about the same as comparing a car doing 76 to a bike doing 20... or finally a bike doing 20mph has about the same kinetic energy as a car doing 5mph...
Now look - I'm not saying that we should base everything on physics as that would create an incredibly fiddly set of speed limits and road traffic laws based on total vehicle mass (including occupants and load) but you know what - lets be serious - to have the same energy as a small car going 20, an 85kg bike + rider would need to be going 78.5 mph - and if people were doing that then we wouldn't have to put up with all this bollocks about cyclists being slow and getting in the way!
Yeah, but it's all concentrated through those tiny thin wheels, so it does more damage...
You are Edward Mountain and I claim my £5
https://road.cc/content/news/255991-conservative-msp-argues-bike-could-d...
Poor choice of examples.
A small electric moped weighs 75kg.
A driver of such a vehicle has to legally obey speed limits.
A fully laden e-cargo bike can easily weigh 120kg.
It is exempt from speed limits.
Now obviously it's quite hard to get 120kg of fully laden cargo bike up to speed on the flat but downhill you could easily surpass 30mph.
According to this Danny MacAskill short you can do a wheelie with cargo bikes though. Yet more dangerous and anti- social behaviour which some politician could
flirt with regulating to play to party membersusefully look into.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XD2eRIgBgI4
Poor basis for comparison.
Have you ridden a fully laden e-cargo bike at 30 mph? Do you know anyone who has? Or are you just trying to justify the bullshit around this topic because Grant Shapps is a Tory?
If the tiny number of heavily-laden cargo bikes are a problem* then let's have registration, number plates, third party insurance and speed limits. But before we introduce that level of beaurocracy for a very small number of vehicles we should ask whether those things are working for larger, more dangerous vehicles...
The road casualty stastics and other evidence show that that they are not.
So this idea is a non-starter.
https://twitter.com/CarltonReid/status/933636636717584384
* has anyone identified how many collisions are there between cargo bikes and other road users, specifically pedestrians? Or is this just more pie-in-the-sky making-it-up-as-we-go-along bullshit?
I have personally ridden a fully laden cargo bike at over 30mph. It was obviously downhill and, for the record, the section of road had a 40 mph limit.
The point is that it is entirely possible for a bicycle being ridden legally to have significantly more kinetic energy than a motorised vehicle being driven legally. That doesn't just apply to cargo bikes either.
Using kinetic energy as justification for the speed limit exemption therefore doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Personally I don't think the number plate idea will ever take off so, in order to catch speeding cyclists, the police will have to actually get out onto the roads and actively police illegal behaviour.
As your data so neatly demonstrates the consequence of this will be far more drivers having their collar felt alongside a tiny number of cyclists. I'm happy with that exchange.
Chapeau! Or - down with this reckless, dangerous "speeding" behaviour.
I'm confused - I guess we should be getting into stopping distances, centres of inertia and were you cycling to the conditions?
So... maybe similar questions to those for a motor vehicle operator! Hmm...
I also think this is empty noise by a politician. At least as far as taking it literally. So - maybe sadly - not really surprising.
It's very much empty noise.
Unfortunately it has hit a sweet spot for the outrage merchants on both sides.
Why was it a poor choice of examples? Pretty standard weights for the majority of variants of each vehicle on the road. You have decided to choose too very rare examples of two vehicles, then decided to put them on one specific section of road. At any other time the e-cargo bike would only be able to get to half the speed limit of this very small e-scooter, which itself is capped under the speed limit of majority of roads (28mph), and in theory might also be able to freewheel passed 30mph.
As I explained below, if kinetic energy is your justification for the lack of speed limits then it's easy to demonstrate the flaws in your argument.
Any bicycle can theoretically surpass the kinetic energy of a moped as the weight difference isn't always that great.
Eg 90kg rider on 15kg bike Vs 50kg rider on 75kg moped.
Still doesn't answer why his is a poor example though. Yours needs such a combination of vehicle types in such specific circumstances. (E-cargo bike fully laden on a specific downhill section with a rider who would let it go faster then 20mph v lighest legal scooter with nothing else on the bike). When most people give examples, they give standards. He gave standards, hence not a poor example.
If your basing your argument on kinetic energy but there is overlap between the two categories your examples should probably reflect that at least to some degree.
A standard bike and rider can easily surpass the kinetic energy of a small moped and rider. Neither are particularly unusual vehicle types.
If you put a moped into the original examples you'd find yourself arguing that speed limits shouldn't apply to it.
That's why the examples were poorly chosen as they ignored the obvious flaw in the argument.
The crucial word you've left out here is "sometimes". I'd guess that *while moving* mopeds will be expected to have higher average speed. Because of the motor. That would make their average kinetic energy higher as the velocity is the dominant term, no? (Through an urban area they could end up with similar average speed if the bike took the same path eg. waiting at same traffic lights; there might be faster routes for bikes via cycle infra).
Where I stay there are plenty of places at the bottom of hills where planners / designers certainly should note that bikes could be moving fast. Overall though - even with motor assistance up the hills - I'd expect a lower average K.E. Other factors are also important here for safe operation eg. braking, stability, turning circle. And asuming that the bikes are legal of course! (I'd suggest that for commercial freight cycles - if enough get used - we might even consider a mini-MOT).
Otherwise we need to take account of the terminal velocity of bikes falling off bridges in the argument!
The point is that if speed limits are needed because of kinetic energy then they need to apply to bicycles too as a bike can easily possess the same kinetic energy as a motorised vehicle which is subject to speed limits.
The average kinetic energy is a meaningless distraction.
If a car breaks the speed limit on one part of its journey but keeps below the limit for the rest do we discount the speeding because the average speed is ok?
So why should we discount periods of high kinetic energy just because the average is lower?
Average speed cameras do indeed work like that.
The point of using average weights/kinetic energy of different vehicle classes is just to simplify the calculations - otherwise it's a case of weighing each and every vehicle in order to discuss them which is an unnecessary level of detail. Yes, there's going to be outliers that would suggest that a vehicle should be in a different class, but they will be a minority.
I'd say both are important for road design and regulation. However if we're talking about the importance of KE for setting speed restrictions (or not) looking at expected / average speeds is entirely sensible. If you put a cargo bike in South Holland, say, (flat) it would be extremely unlikely to ever get near your magic number (downhill). * A moped there would be going around at whatever top speed it's capable of, and most of the time - because more motor. And it could have that speed anywhere - on a long straight in the country, in an urban area...
Move that to near me and now you could hit your max speed. So would that justify regulation *everywhere*? I'd suggest this would be excessive (eg. waste of money). There are only a limited number of places where this would be possible. Again the moped could possess dangerous KE anywhere.
Back to the big picture - however you want to manage things we should be measuring outcomes (including "near miss events"), prioritising and (the government's own choice - so they say) encouraging active travel. That seems a world away from what Shapps' has been saying for his own political advertising!
* it's blowy there sometimes so maybe you could occasionally put up a sail...
Thinking again - don't the Dutch have some intermediate categories between "cycle" (which covers a lot of vehicles) and "full motorcycle / car". There's definitely a "motor scooter" class. They also have some fast pedelecs- not sure what category they fall into.
Ignoring the fact that all these things are currently very rare and accepting we "need to do something" - shouldn't the government be proposing a *study* (or even trial, just like with scooters - although that horse may have bolted now)? Since we don't have packs of them over here why not look overseas? Nothing to stop then reviewing both the safety data and how / why things are regulated.
Yes, in NL there have long been "snorfietsen" and "bromfietsen".
A snorfiets is a very light motorbike, some historically were basically bicycles with engines. They are, by law, not supposed to be capable of more than 25 km/h. There was no requirement to wear a helmet with them, but that is (sadly?) changing next year.
A bromfiets is a 50cc bike, meant to be limited to 45 km/h. A helmet is required, since the 70s. You need to pass a test to ride one (since mid 90s).
Snor and brom fietsen used to go on bicycle paths (fietspad), but now they generally can not, unless otherwise indicated.
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