The 'cyclists should pay road tax' folks

[Freddy88FM]

Hi guys,

Foreword: I'm aware this is a provocative topic so please can we be sure not to let this degrade in to a slagging match.

Ok, so I was just listening to Jeremy Vine while at work and the topic of cycling came on. Some guy was describing how a car left him little room when overtaking despite the highway code mentioning bikes are to be given as much room as other vehicles. The disgruntled cyclist explained that this is dangerous because it seriously limits his ability to negotiate pot holes and should one arise while the car is next to him then he is over the handlebars. A fair point I thought.

Suddenly from across the desk one of my colleagues (ironically he cycles regularly on the road and I cycle every now and then- both of us drive and tax two or more cars) shouts 'BUT THEY DON'T PAY ROAD TAX!'.

Immediately we got in to a debate but after about 1 min or so he said we should agree to disagree and get on with work. We did. A shame, I like a good debate!

So my question to those who agree with Mat, my colleague, is: how on earth can this be a point against cycling? It is not a legal requirement for them to pay road tax and as the law stands they are free to use the roads in the same way that cars do (with the exception of motorways etc), so what is wrong with a bike using the road? To say 'but they don't pay road tax' is equivalent to saying 'but they don't have buildings insurance!', they neither require road tax nor buildings insurance by law.

As for my opinion: I agree that it's a topic that we should debate and the law could well be changed. We should undeniably be encouraging cycling in our cities particularly so I'm reluctant to make it expensive. However I do think insurance is important. But I don't support a tax on it personally.

EDIT: an interesting stat that came up in this debate is that road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. If we assume (for easy figures) that a average bike + rider is 100kg, and the average car is 1600kg... then the wear over one mile of a car due to a bike is 65,536 times higher.

Edited by Freddy88FM on Tuesday 3rd March 16:28

[Freddy88FM]

conkerman said:

Your colleague is an idiot.

Can you hurt him without being fired? You may even get a promotion.

Haha, he's actually my co-director here. Firing could be problematic!

[Freddy88FM]

kiseca said:

Great idea. Let's create more beurocratic red tape and price kids and people who can't afford to run a car off the road. Be sure to make insurance compulsory for them too. After all, why should the masses be left with access to a cheap mode of travel when somebody important has a meeting to get to in their Vauxhall?

Actually forget all that. Can we just leave the fking bikes alone for just one whole week?

Please see foreword.

[Freddy88FM]

LittleEnus said:

You pay road tax for a specific vehicle, not everything you own. I don't just buy one VED then think I can use my other cars un-VED'd. So why do cyclists think this?

Cyclists have become a huge menace in my opinion.

But you drive your car on the road without buildings insurance? This is my point. Just like you are not legally required to have buildings insurance for your car, cyclists are not legally required to pay VED. So how is the whole 'no VED so get off the road' argument relevant.

I walk to work (only live 3 miles away and the dog comes with me- two birds one stone by walking) and I have to cross a number of roads... should I also be required to pay VED for me and my dog?

[Freddy88FM]

Fittster said:

What I don't understand is why cyclists are reluctant to carry some for of visible identification. Wouldn't responsible cyclists wish to see those how flaunt regulations removed from the road?

In my opinion the main reasons are as follow:

1) a bike running a red light is several orders of magnitude less dangerous than a car doing the same. I'd be significantly more worried about a car shooting a light than a bike personally.
2) the main danger (beyond cosmetic damage to a car/van/lorry) is to the cyclist his/herself.
3) red tape would discourage cycling when we need to encourage it if we want to stop our cities grinding to a halt

[Freddy88FM]

SuperVM said:

Quite, but the point was as a cyclist, I do pay it, just not on my bike. Of course, I don't expect to use a car without valid VED on the road, but my comment is no less valid than those claiming cyclists don't pay it, both are nonsense.

My point is that it isn't a legal requirement for cyclists to pay, so why is it ever used as a reason for them not to be on the road. I just don't get the logic.

[Freddy88FM]

otolith said:

As I understand it, wear to the roads is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the weight acting on the axle. So several orders of magnitude is probably closer to the truth.

Very interesting. I was wondering how weight impacts on road use... do you have a source for this?

[Freddy88FM]

Gandahar said:

You miss the point, the point is that if it was just bikes on the road repairs would not be done at all, neither would roads be built. Roads are built and maintained to keep ££ flowing in the economy.

You see, I think you have that the wrong way around. In my opinion roads were throughout history (and continue to be) built and maintained to let people go wherever they want for whatever reason they want whenever they want as easily as reasonably possible. This is a theme throughout history.

Pounds through the economy come as a side effect of that.

[Freddy88FM]

otolith said:

It's a rule of thumb - there are more accurate ways of modelling it, and other sources of variation, but see;

http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?item...

page 17.

Thanks. Interesting.

For anyone wondering it basically says the wear due to the weight of a reference axle to the power of four times the number of times it passes a particular spot is equal to the wear due to the weight of the heavy axle to the power of four times the number of times it passes a particular spot.

So if the weight of the heavy axle increases by 1 unit then the number of times it can pass a spot and leave the same damage decreases by a factor of the new weight to the power of four.

EDIT: If we assume (for easy figures) that a average bike + rider is 100kg, and the average car is 1600kg... then the wear over one mile of a car due to a bike is 65,536 times higher.

Edited by Freddy88FM on Tuesday 3rd March 16:29

[Freddy88FM]

TurboHatchback said:

No it shouldn't.

By that logic every human being in the land should have insurance as at some point they will cross a road or walk down a pavement. Do you seriously believe that a 7yr old toodling round on his pushbike in the road outside his house should be legally obliged to possess 3rd party liability insurance? How would you punish him for failing to comply, no pocket money for a week or life in prison?

Ah, but it's all about risk. the risk of a pedestrian following too closely and locking up under braking thus hitting the back of a car is fairly minimal. Having had a guy on a bike take a chunk out of my boot lid with his brake lever 5 years ago and then cycle off (paint still missing to this day), I personally do agree that some sort of registration and insurance would be a good idea. Government funded maybe? Discouraging cycling must be avoided so we'd need to make it super easy and free.

[Freddy88FM]

Mave said:

I've had 4 separate incindents where a motorist has damaged my car and they've driven off leaving me out of pocket. There are also more uninsured drivers than uninsured cyclists on the road. I'd rather the effort went into enforcing existing regulation of high risk road users than introducing new legislation for lower risk users.

Agreed, another good point. Though I suggest you get a dash cam asap!

Regarding effort: clearly there is a fairly serious problem with attitude towards cyclists. So either we spend money on a system to register them, or we spend money a program to educate other road users.

[Freddy88FM]

TurboHatchback said:

This whole idea of 'cyclists' as some dedicated minority of angry, lycra-clad, red-light-jumping commuters is rather misleading too. I bet more than 90% of the population has a bike somewhere that they use at least occasionally on a road, from toddlers to geriatrics. Introducing licensing and mandatory insurance for 'cyclists' (everyone) would create a mind-boggling amount of bureaucracy, would be totally unenforceable and give no benefit at all. Do you really think the person that hit you and rode off would have bothered to get insurance and then stopped to give you his details were it mandatory? Of course not. The sort of person that would stop then would stop now and offer to pay for your dented boot lid.

I agree that cars are far more dangerous. However I think the system I'm speaking about is just a way to identify a bicycle and therefore a rider. So in the case of someone riding off most have dash cams there days. It was pretty annoying to have my car damaged. I don't mind much now because it's a 2003 106 GTi that I use to drive around London but at the time it was very clean and I would have liked the guy to sort it to a reasonable level- it's a big ding.

As much as I support cycling and as much as I will defend cyclists' rights, it does make me nervous when I'm in a nice car with four or five bikes each side at the lights at rush hour.

I will agree though, are the costs worth it to please someone with a concern as relatively mild as mine.

[Freddy88FM]

Tony33 said:

he key issue to me is allowing mandatory traffic control to be determined as optional for a group of road users. We have all sat patiently waiting at a red light at a cross roads with no traffic in sight only for a cyclist to come past, check there is no traffic and cross. With very few exceptions would a car driver do the same regardless of how safe the maneuver may be. I don't believe any road user should have the right to override traffic control based on their own judgment of safety.

You see, I disagree. For me the main thing is to make the roads as safe as possible and frankly to encourage many people to cycle as physically possible (in our cities). The advantage is a reduction of congestion, an increase in air quality and an increase in fitness (and subsequently health- both mental and physical) of the city population.

The advantage of riding a bike at the moment is that you can travel much faster through the city streets than in a car. You are essentially a glorified pedestrian- the dangers you present to other road users (excluding yourself) are extremely minimal. Any risk you take is of potentially huge personal consequence to you and not much of a risk to Joe Bloggs in his Ford Mondeo beyond a paint scratch in much the same way as a pedestrian crossing a road not at a pedestrian crossing- the personal risk is far far higher to him than the cars on the road.

In my opinion for the above reason it does not matter if a cyclist goes through a light carefully, a mistake will only cost him and unlikely anyone else. However a car that makes a similar mistake is likely to be much more serious for innocent parties.

It seems your main gripe is not this however... it is about patience and to me (honestly) seems quite strange. Seeing someone else wait does not give me satisfaction, equally seeing someone else make progress does not make me frustrated. It's just a quirk of the nature of transport I have chosen vs the one they have chosen. I could quite easily get out of my car and on a bike to make the same level of progress.

Unfortunately however, most of the time, in London, my balls are not big enough.

Can I ask if you feel the same about Jay Walking? Germany has outlawed it... you must wait at a crossing to cross the road. This is much the same as a cyclist having to wait at a red light. Do you therefore agree that pedestrians should wait their turn to cross the road or should be permitted to cross when they feel it's safe to do so given the risk presented to others is pretty minimal even if they screw up?

Oh, and finally, to address your point about cyclists having to be reovertaken countless times if they jump lights... that may be true in the country but in the city the light jumpers often disappear off in to the distance. I don't get a chance to overtake them... they overtake me! Personally I prefer it that way rather than having them all buzzing around my car each time a light goes green.

Edited by Freddy88FM on Wednesday 4th March 09:49

[Freddy88FM]

Tony33 said:

y main gripe is about having two sets of road users who appear to have different rulesets even if officially there is only one. We separate pedestrians who move in a very unstructured way and motorists who have a very structured set of rules. Cyclists fall somewhere in between and some seem to choose whether they behave like cars or pedestrians when it suits them.

Losing momentum on a bike requires physical effort to regain but the resulting approach tends to be that some cyclists are the least patient of road users, choosing to keep going even if it significantly increases risk.

Surely though blanket rules are less useful and less likely to be ignored than rules tailored to specifics.

Regarding your second point... I still don't really understand <b>why</b> a lack of patience is a problem here. You mention an increase in 'risk', but we've been through the important and fundamental distinction in who accepts that risk when a bike runs a light vs a car (I appreciate there are scenarios where pedestrians are at very real risk- personally I'd propose allowing bikes through pedestrian crossings too but only at slow walking speed... once again).

Frankly I just don't see why it's a good idea to let cyclists get in front of all the cars at lights, then sit there waiting for them to go green. They accelerate away painfully slowly in a big peloton that's impossible to overtake only to get up to speed and then come back past you at the next set of lights, sit in front, wait for them to change and repeat. Personally I'd much rather they just carried on through and got ahead of me rather than buzzing around my car.

It also stops them all jostling for position off the lights... which is extremely irritating for a driver as it makes getting past impossible.

I appreciate I am speaking for London here. There are fewer cyclists in a lot of other cities.

[Freddy88FM]

Motorrad said:

While we're on the subject I bet these lycra wearers are the sort who wear those tights to go running in.

Out of interest, why does it matter? I run regularly and wear rugby shorts and a long sleeve wicking shirt to run in... is that also ridiculous since I have no intention of playing rugby during my run?

[Freddy88FM]

jmorgan said:

Justify it all you want, it ain't natural..........

Neither is driving