Number plates for cycles ? - Insurance company discussion article

[Cunobelin]

Hi all, And what this cycling pedestrian would like others to know is that Drivers have not got a monopoly of road use, indeed they are there by conditional licence, obey laws.
People who cycle on pavements should desist from doing so!In law it is even illegal for children to do so, but we must surely tolerate that.
So if you want to travel by mechanical means, either motor or pedal, learn the rules , respect them, get trained up.
Assertive positioning YES, aggressive positioning NO!
Training breeds confidence, that breeds safety.
If you are in the wrong accept the fact and learn from it. MM

Unfortunately to most motorists assertive positioning is blocking "their" road and seen as aggressive

[Oldjohnw]

I really don't think we need to fear this.

Number plates means registration. Registration means a central registering department. Millions of tansactions will be recorded, many of which will be extremely minor. You imagine every little kid's bike worth £30 second hand! What about the dozens of little modification s we all carry out? MOTs?

[Cunobelin]

Hi all, And what this cycling pedestrian would like others to know is that Drivers have not got a monopoly of road use, indeed they are there by conditional licence, obey laws.
People who cycle on pavements should desist from doing so!In law it is even illegal for children to do so, but we must surely tolerate that.
So if you want to travel by mechanical means, either motor or pedal, learn the rules , respect them, get trained up.
Assertive positioning YES, aggressive positioning NO!
Training breeds confidence, that breeds safety.
If you are in the wrong accept the fact and learn from it. MM

I also agree with this.

However, there is one problem and that is the majority of people have been conditioned and as a result are selectively blind.
In the past I have used a 'riddle' as an analogy. Briefly it's a man is driving his son to school and crashes his car. He's killed and taken to the hospital morgue, the son is seriously injured and taken to the same hospital and has to go for emergency surgery. The surgeon pulls back the cover ready to operate and then says "I can't, he's my son". How can this be?
I've had answers of twins, adopted, test tube babies, dopplegangers and my favorite the man is actually in a comatose stated wakes up on the slab and runs upstairs to start his shift as a surgeon. The actual answer is the surgeon is the boy's Mother.
No one is unaware that children are the result of an interaction of a man and woman and one is the Father and the other the Mother. They also all know that women can be doctors. But from a young age children are conditioned, anyone played doctors and nurses where the girls are doctors and the boys nurses?
WRT transport everyone can see the cyclist running the red light or riding on the pavement and knows this is against the rules but because 'everyone' speeds and, well you need to park somewhere they don't observe the same of speeding motorists and people parking and therefore driving on the pavement.
Much of this biase may be unconcious but it happens all the same.
An example
The headline of this story is 'Man who died whilst walking on A38 near M5 named'. Died whilst walking, of a heart attack perhaps? He was struck by a motor vehicle. Can you imagine a pedestrian being hit by someone cycling and the headline being 'Man died whilst walking...'?
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bris ... th-3383736

And on that story - at least the Post managed to get the important bit in there up front and centre - "The road was closed for almost six hours"

Road collisions/deaths are considered to be like the weather or acts of God, and the thing the papers think people want/need to know first is "How much will this inconvenience me and my journey?"

We had a "Grink" in our local paper who was absolutely amazing in his demands.

There was a fatal accident on the A3, and it was closed for a couple of hours.

His rant was that he had been inconvenienced because the Police and Ambulance had their priorities wrong.
They should be moving the patients to the side of the road before treating them, there was absolutely no need to treat them in the road

Then the Police should get the vehicles off the road to get traffic moving immediately. Investigations were secondary to restoring traffic flow

[merseymouth]

Hi Cunobelin , Sounds like "Cloning" of Jeremy Clarkson has taken place?
One basic fact must be re-energized in the brains of Legislators, Judiciary and Law Enforcement Officers - Motor traffic is permitted to use the roads by "Conditional Licence", many terms & conditions, all available to read in codified for in he "Highway Code", the Government's "Noddy's Book of Road-craft"!
But whilst cyclists have a Right to use the roads they to must obey the rules put in place for safety.
What is obviously needed is a bit of backbone to enforce the readily available rules. Reduce the leeway of tolerance against ALL breaches of regulations. Radically amend the "Totting Up" process, bring about suspension of the Licence much earlier on the offending route. Immediately make it an automatic ban for any use of mobile phone, no discretion on the grounds of hardship by magistrates!
If offenders felt the pain of being deprived of their motoring freedom early enough in their offending practises then only then will hey address their behaviour.
When drivers can still legally be driving with 25 points on heir licence then something is radically wrong . A Licence is a Privilege not a Right!
More cameras, make them evidence ready, make the court process act earlier & speedier, why should someone continue to endanger all due to slow process?
But first and foremost the Police Officer must cease to offer any solace to offenders, any level of offending with motor vehicles can bring about a death sentence for some poor human being, hitting someone with an steel bar is considered a serious offence, but if that steel bar is a car bumper, then we call it an "Accident"! Carpe Diem. MM

[Spinners]

https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/l ... nston/1770

Gobsmacked that it's this guy... I'd previously thought he was a good egg.

[Cugel]

https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-winston/1770

Gobsmacked that it's this guy... I'd previously thought he was a good egg.

Wot, you believe in the good-guys vs bad-guys theory of anthropology, as portrayed in John Wayne filums or them ones with Bruce the Killer? Alas, the human is a shapeshifting beast - at least in it's mental aspects - so can be anything from very, very bad to very, very good and all things in between, often at the same time! Moreover, the definitions of good and bad vary wildly over time and geography. Lawdy! How's a wee human to cope?

There is the simple explanation for this and the more complex one. Here is the simple one:

We humans are possessed by devils but also by guardian angels. Well, that's what they called them in the days of the witch hunters (still with us but now called "the gutter press"). That Dawkins came up with the modern version: we host memes - metaphysical replicators rather like the physical genes - that compete, interbreed and survive or perish according to various features that fit them to their metaphysical ecologies - our brains and their carrier - or don't.

Memeplexes, such as religions and ideologies, evolve. They often drive those possessed to all sorts of wildly contradictory and self-harming acts. On the smaller scale, we are possessed by minor devils and angels, such as the love of the car and a belief in our right to employ it to the full (a devil-memeplex); or the notion that being considerate of others will generate benefits for all (a little angel memeplex).

The point is that these things have a life of their own. Like parasites or symbionts they survive best by living and evolving in a host (we humans) but they don't necessarily have our human gene's future survivability or welfare in mind. Or they might ... but only via the elimination of humans hosting competing memeplexes (and so we have religious and ideological wars).

As with genetic parasites and symbionts, we humans can host lots of different ones at any time. Many memeplexes will have contradictory vectors in their struggles to survive. Even as a soldier murders a few civilians he might be doing so to save his comrades (or think he is). Thus Lord W can promote a charity via a sponsored bike ride whilst also spouting nonsense about bike number plates. Perhaps he also saves abused puppies but poisons the neighbours cats? This is the nature of them memes that swarm in our poor big brains! They make us the puppets of their devilish or their angelic intents as they struggle for survival.

And none of us can avoid them .... unless we're a wolf-boy, brought up without language and human culture.

Cugel, infected with the meme memeplex.

[Oldjohnw]

I think Lord Winston is, overall, a good guy. He has given hope to thousands. It's just he has strange views in this area. We all have a view somewhere in our portfolio which some will find difficult.

His apparent hippocrisy does, however, stand out somewhat.

[reohn2]

I think Lord Winston is, overall, a good guy. He has given hope to thousands. It's just he has strange views in this area. We all have a view somewhere in our portfolio which some will find difficult.

His apparent hippocrisy does, however, stand out somewhat.

Well said,I agree,the good eggs can't be all things to all wo/men,this chap has,due to his personal experience,jumped to a conclusion which can't and won't be solved by his train of thinking.

[Cyril Haearn]

He is a VIP, the media are interested in his opinions, even about things outwith his expertise
I submit that most members of these fora know more about this than he does

[Oldjohnw]

And possibly in his own field he knows more than most here put together!

[RickH]

I really don't think we need to fear this.

Number plates means registration. Registration means a central registering department. Millions of tansactions will be recorded, many of which will be extremely minor. You imagine every little kid's bike worth £30 second hand! What about the dozens of little modification s we all carry out? MOTs?

I sometimes wonder how much all the car drivers would happily pay extra on their VED to cover the cost of administering this - bikes would be £0 rated as they have less CO² emissions than any currently £0 rated car.

In fact, you could argue that bikes should be negatively rated!

[The utility cyclist]

Hi all, And what this cycling pedestrian would like others to know is that Drivers have not got a monopoly of road use, indeed they are there by conditional licence, obey laws.
People who cycle on pavements should desist from doing so!In law it is even illegal for children to do so, but we must surely tolerate that.
So if you want to travel by mechanical means, either motor or pedal, learn the rules , respect them, get trained up.
Assertive positioning YES, aggressive positioning NO!
Training breeds confidence, that breeds safety.
If you are in the wrong accept the fact and learn from it. MM

sorry but no, and some local authorities are allowing cycling on footways/footpaths and insert it into their transport policy. When/IF government take cycling safety seriously and address the real issues and provide safe routes EVERYWHERE be that by stopping up roads to motor vehicles (preferred option) or otherwise, then you can start to make noise about cycling on paths with pedestrians.
In any case the threat of harm to pedestrians is minimal, less harm by people on bikes than pedestrians doing to themselves, even the bias compiler of the anti cycling rant last year (who was asked by the gov to write a paper about cycling safety/new laws etc) had to include that fact.

So if we have to have plates for cyclists then we need visible plates for all peds given the harm they do to others and themselves, compulsory helmets and hi-vis for peds and motorists as well, plus also mobile phone and headphone laws for peds, drivers can do what they want because police don't bother with laws for motorists anyways!

The rules are bent, they favour those in the tin boxes with an engine and lots of kinetic energy, when rules are bent they should be broken/fought against until the powers that be understand why they are being broken. I won't respect rules I know and many others know to be wrong/unjust.
Getting trained up, for what, war, training not to get killed, that's basically what cycle training currently is about, focus your attention on those doing the harm to others and themselves, that motorists and peds btw.

Training breeds brain washed kids and adults, it trains them that they need to wear helmets and hi-vis or they'll die and it's irresponsible to not wear those garments, training breeds subservient cyclists, it breeds people who will criticise and admonish other cyclists because they aren't following the explicit rules of the training put in place by motor-centric organisations using motor centric rules.

One needs to be seemingly "aggressive" because otherwise you'll get squashed and continuously doffing your cap and getting out the way all the time, the usual BS 'better to cede priority than be dead' or any other similar nonsense is just that, there's no evidence for it but all it does do is breed contempt of human beings rights, it breeds people into thinking might is right.

Sorry but your post/comments are contemptible for the most part and fails to grasp where the problems lie, massively so!

[The utility cyclist]

I think Lord Winston is, overall, a good guy. He has given hope to thousands. It's just he has strange views in this area. We all have a view somewhere in our portfolio which some will find difficult.

His apparent hippocrisy does, however, stand out somewhat.

He's a dangerous senile old fart with a massive bee in his bonnet who refuses to abide by his own scientific logic, he might have been a good guy, now he's just dangerous, a pathological liar and clearly has lost perspective completely, typical HoL type really.

[Oldjohnw]

I think Lord Winston is, overall, a good guy. He has given hope to thousands. It's just he has strange views in this area. We all have a view somewhere in our portfolio which some will find difficult.

His apparent hippocrisy does, however, stand out somewhat.

He's a dangerous senile old fart with a massive bee in his bonnet who refuses to abide by his own scientific logic, he might have been a good guy, now he's just dangerous, a pathological liar and clearly has lost perspective completely, typical HoL type really.

Ah! Now I know!

[Cugel]

He is a VIP, the media are interested in his opinions, even about things outwith his expertise
I submit that most members of these fora know more about this than he does

Ah ha! Here is the nub of the matter. This fellow is a real fellow but to all of us who have never met him he is not a real fellow but a media construct. All we "know" about him is the conglomeration of various media "stories". Stories, not our own experience of the bloke.

"Well, we have to have faith in the media, as they are tasked with telling us the truth about the wider world" many will say. Mass media as truth tellers ...... Once perhaps. These days the mass media does infotainment, usually far removed from any variety of truth.

But stories about VIPs, slebs or whatever you want to call them are now the main vehicle for raising and "discussing" issues of one sort or another. We are no longer asked to consider various hard facts in a reasoning manner, when it comes to forming an opinion about the policies we'd prefer. These days we are merely asked to become a fan of a seleb and its various utterances, as constructed by various axe-grinding PR organisations, large or small.

I might care what Lord W has to say about cycling were he in front of me now and engageable in a conversation. I couldn't care less about some alleged media utterance and the vast amount of spin put upon it by some rabid journo. I care more about what Alan next door thinks about the issue; and why (which "why" I can get out of him then discuss face to face).

Reality via your own experience or the hoots of some mass media propaganda horn. Which do you prefer?

Cugel