Q6: Why are compulsory licences and number plates for cyclists & cycles such a bad idea?

Q6: Why are compulsory licences and number plates for cyclists & cycles such a bad idea?

Licences and number plates to regulate a relatively harmless activity like cycling would be a waste of time, effort and tax-payers’ money. It would probably suppress cycling too – not a good thing for public health.

Introducing licences and number plates to regulate cycling would not be cost-effective because it would:

Make negligible difference to people’s safety • Compared to motor vehicles, cycles pose little danger to others, including pedestrians and car occupants, but their riders are: less likely to be assigned a ‘contributory factor’ in collisions with motor vehicles than the drivers involved, but considerably more likely to be hurt (see Qs 2 & 3) • Cycles are relatively light, low speed and they’re easy to learn to ride – it’s so simple that many toddlers manage it. Conversely, driving involves operating a large, heavy piece of complex machinery capable of high speeds.

Quite rightly, this has to be regulated and you must be at least 17 before you’re even allowed to take a test.

• Any new regulations would probably miss their target altogether. Reckless cyclists would probably go on riding regardless of the regulations. Indeed, Toronto stopped issuing cycling licences long ago because they failed to change offending behaviour. 34

Discourage people from cycling, so society would lose out • Banning people from cycling if they haven’t registered/licensed themselves is likely to put many off, especially would-be cyclists or those who, like many, ride intermittently or seasonally. Society would then lose out on the health, wellbeing, environmental and economic benefits of cycling (Qs 1 & 10). 35

Burden the police for no good reason • Forces are stretched and need to focus their resources on tackling real threats to the public which, in the case of road safety, come from motor vehicles. • Even if supplied with a licence plate number, officers find it challenging enough to pursue every single report of motoring offences, particularly if they think it’s “minor”.

Reports of infringements involving number-plated cycles are highly unlikely to attract a more robust response, unless the incident is serious or fatal in which case they would respond anyway, whether or not the vehicles involved were number-plated.

34 City of Toronto. Bicycle Licensing. 35 See, for instance, p9 of DfT’s Gear Change: a bold vision for cycling and walking, July 2020.

Be a costly and bureaucratic nightmare because: The law only covers registration for mechanically propelled vehicles, so the Government would have to introduce new legislation for cycles and then pay for extensive upgrades to the relevant computer systems. They don’t want to do this, 36 and they’ve repeatedly stated that the costs and complexity would outweigh any road safety or other benefits. 37 Talk about complexity: the system would have to add millions of bikes to the 30-odd million private licenced cars they already regulate. There are, at the very least, 25 million cycles in GB (assuming that individuals own just one bike, and excluding those owned by children under 5).

What’s more, cycles change hands as often, if not more often, than cars and, unlike driving, many people use them intermittently38 and/or keep them in the garage/shed all winter – hence fairness would dictate some version of SORN for bikes.

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The system would also have to decide what to do about children. They are more likely to own cycles than adults and regularly grow into and out of one frame and into another. In England alone, about four-fifths of children aged 5-10 and just under 70% of 11-16-year-olds own bicycles (= 8 million+ cycles – ownership among other age groups ranges from 24% to 49%).40 It's useful to note here that regulatory systems were introduced in Toronto and Switzerland, but subsequently abolished because of the nightmarish bureaucracy necessary and the pointlessness of it.

41 In countries famed for their high levels of cycle use, cyclists aren’t tested/licensed/registered etc. Prime examples of this are the Netherlands and Denmark, where c.27% and c.16% of trips are cycled, respectively – in Britain, we usually struggle to get past 2%, sadly.

3rd party insurance

Cycling UK does not want anyone to face barriers if they decide to cycle, and this includes making public liability insurance compulsory. Nonetheless, we encourage cyclists to take out 3rd party insurance, and automatically cover our members up to £10 million

36 Answer to House of Lords Written Question, 9 Oct 2006. 37 For example: Answer to written PQ, 28 June 2021; Answer to Question in the House of Lords, 18 March 2019; Answer to a PQ, 4 Dec 2015 38 See Q2 & Q5 of Cycling UK’s Cycling Statistics. 39 DfT. Traffic statistics. Table TRA0404. 40 DfT. National Travel Survey. Table NTS0608. 41 Toronto; Switzerland