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Martin Underwood · July 29th 06, 11:40 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote in message
:

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
In article . com,
(Neillw001) wrote:

Jack Taylor wrote:

[Ken's bike lunacy]

It would be totally impractical to enforce, just how many bicycles
are there in the London area that would be affected? Anyone can buy
a bicycle from anywhere without need to register it. It would
require an Act of Parliament to make it legal and such a thing
would never be passed.

Why. If there was a political will, it would happen. I don't know why it
wasn't enacted several decades ago: any vehicle on the road needs to obey
the Highway Code and needs to be identifiable if it fails to do so.

Ken is talking of a Private Bill, something London has every year.
But it could well fall foul of the Parliamentary procedures because
of its effect on people outside London.

Colin, I understand what you say about impracticality of "local"
legally-enforced bike registration; i.e. it would have to be national
or nothing.

As a cyclist (as well as a car driver) I'd wholeheartedly support a national
bicycle registration scheme with a requirement to display
clearly-identifiable number plates front and back that could be read by
police or traffic-light cameras. It's rare to see cars go through red
traffic lights (I see maybe one every couple of months) whereas almost every
day I see cyclists ride straight through lights as if they don't apply to
cyclists - and this is at any time in the phase of the lights, not just at
the very start or end of the red phase. Presumably the thought of being
identified and nicked is a great deterrent for car drivers and the absence
of this for cyclists makes them think they can get away with it... which
they can :-( Likewise for cyclists who drive full-tilt at zebra crossings
with loads of people on, scattering them in their wake - I saw this in
Oxford while I was out cycling: a nutter cyclist overtook me as I was
slowing down for the zebra and rode straight at a group of tourists on the
crossing, scattering them in panic. Luckily a police car was passing and
pulled the cyclist over, but had the police not witnessed it, there was no
registration number that I could have reported to the police.

I believe that road traffic offences committed while cycling don't count
towards penalty points on a car licence: I'd like to see this change too.