We should introduce a cycling licence
Wales Business — By Duncan Higgitt on February 10, 2010 7:00 am
A sensible cyclist - are they a dying breed?
IT’S not rocket science.
Stick to your side of the road. Don’t jump red lights. Use lights at night, stay visible at all other times. Don’t ride on the pavement unless it is also a cycle route.
You don’t need a degree to ride a bicycle. So perhaps that’s the only reason that riders aren’t expected to sit some kind of test before venturing out onto the open highway. However, we have all seen them – clowns weaving in and out of traffic, indiscernible in the dark to all but the most skillful owl, or at the side of the road – but pedalling into oncoming traffic, taking their lives in their hands and leaving the motorist who flattens them with a life sentence of guilt to do battle with.
No wonder motorists resent cyclists. If you’ve ridden a bike on the road in recent years, you will have seen the evidence of this in a million little things: being driven to too closely to (being “given a haircut”); cars deliberately stopped at lights in the cycle lane so that you can’t get past; taking no notice of the bike zone at lights; shouting; swearing; and, in some cases, violence. For every idiot on a bike, there are five in cars.
In many respects, motorists have a right to feel aggrieved. Whenever there are improvements to the roads here in Cardiff, they seem to only benefit the pedestrian and the cyclist. There are the ill-thought-out lane-narrowing schemes, for example. In one part of Cardiff, this now means that the fairly recently-introduced bendy buses cannot pass one another at certain pinch points, contributing to already considerable traffic chaos choking the city. If the aim was to get people out of their cars, its advantages are certainly obvious. It takes less time, money and trouble to get anywhere in the capital by bike than it does by car.
So, coming from someone who would rather use a bike and public transport, this may seem a little strange, but we should pity the poor motorist. When their cars are getting banged around on the kind of roads you’d expect to find in North Korea and they see cyclists able to whip past on schemes so new that the cement is barely dry, it must be easy to ruminate on the unfairness of the world. After all, while the public transport system in the city is pretty good, it is often woeful outside of it. If you run a small business with clients across south Wales, you need a car, and no number of pontificating council officials-cum-apprentice social engineers will change that. Most SME owners work hard enough as it is without adding three hours of dead time travelling on patchy buses and trains.
So perhaps its time to take some of the rancour off the roads. Cyclists aren’t the reason travelling by car is so bloody awful, but they can present a clearly identifiable target for a motorist’s anger – particularly so if they are riding like morons and getting away with it. How gladdened would a traffic-jammed driver feel if he looked over to the side of the road and saw a cyclist getting nicked?
Away from that, there is a more serious side to introducing a licence for cyclists. In the past decade, 29 pedestrians have been killed following accidents involving riders, and over 2,600 serious accidents. However, incidence of conviction remain few and far between. In 2007, cyclist Chico Mwamba was convicted of careless cycling and fined £160 for knocking down a pedestrian at a crossing in Lewisham. The 76-year-old man died following the collision.
If this conviction is typical, then it is plainly obvious that the punishment does not match the severity of the incident’s outcome. The police can prosecute cyclists who ride dangerously, carelessly, ignore traffic signs or signals, cycle on the pavement or commit any other road traffic offence. These offences carry maximum fines between £500 and £2,500. Also, £30 fixed penalty notices can be issued for cycling on the pavement, by police and community wardens. But when have any of us heard of cyclists being prosecuted, particularly in relation to the bad incidences of bike riding we see each day on our roads?
So how would a cycle licence work? We’ve already established that cycling requires common sense above all else. Anyone over the age of 16 that owns a bike should be compelled to sign and return a form that confirms they understand and accept the range of penalties they would face if they were found to be in contravention of a variety of traffic regulations, as well as for a range of personal safety measures, ensuring that lights, and perhaps protective gear such as helmets are used or worn. They would then receive a cycling licence, or it could be added as a class to an existing driving licence.
As the consequence of breaking traffic laws are potentially as serious as when driving a car, the fines should mirror those for motorists, and points could be added to a licence in a similar way. Because there is no easy way of identifying bikes with their riders, all of the convictions would come from stop-on-sight. Anyone over the age of 16 found in possession of a bike and no licence (as opposed to not having it on them) should be fined and banned.
That’s the idea in very rough outline. There would no doubt be plenty of finer details to iron out, but it could be implemented at a reasonable cost (the licence is simply a case of form processing and should cost no more than an administrative charge, to be born by the applicant).
It would be introduced with the aim of providing a more robust framework for prosecution and help to take some of the heat out of the street by both placing some additional responsibility on the shoulders of cyclists and helping to reassure motorists that riders are subject to the same kind of strictures they face.
Tags: bicycle, car, rider, road, transport
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17 Comments
Love your argument, Mr H, even if you are so very wrong!
All the things you point out in your second paragraph, there are charges you can lay against car drivers as well.
As a regular car driver, pedestrian and cyclist, I feel confident in saying the biggest menace on our roads (and pavements) these days is the average car driver.
I have a 15-minute walk to work every day and particularly during school term time it can be a very dangerous quarter of an hour stroll. You have to keep your wits about you due to speeding motorists, drivers not signalling, impatient school run parents mounting the pavements or overtaking in a 20mph “school zone”….the list goes on and on.
Cyclists are a convenient scapegoat and provide a smokescreen for the biggest problem we face – we are a nation of bad drivers (apart from me, obviously).
What’s worse is that as a nation of bad drivers, we’re always looking for someone else to blame.
Come on Duncan, Adam’s riding isn’t that bad… Besides, why should we make cycling more regulated when it’s environmentally-friendly and improves health – therefore saving the NHS money and probably improving our productivity?
Some of the clichés you repeat have more innocent explanations:
“Going through red lights” = some genius of a traffic engineer has put a sensor on so that anything that’s big enough will trigger the lights: you’re too small on your bike and it’s the middle of the night and there’s no traffic to be seen. Or sometimes it means that there’s a very short amber on a particular light.
“Cycling on the wrong side of the road” = cycling defensively between two lines of parked cars so that oncoming motorists have to wait for you, rather than squeezing you into some numpty opening his car door. Or worse still, it can be that variety of traffic engineering idiocy that puts death-trap pinch-points and misaligned speed cushions (such as the ones on Monthermer Road that give you a choice of scraping car doors or cycling in the middle of the road) on roads and claims that it makes them safer.
You missed the variant on this cliché: “cycling the wrong way along one-way streets” = this can be the result of crass traffic engineering, such as the cycle path on the south side of St Peter’s Street, which takes you across City Road at a pedestrian crossing and then drops you, you guessed it, cycling the wrong way along a one-way street.
“Riding on the pavement” = again, usually some traffic engineer’s fault — this comes in two varieties: (1) cycle routes that vanish into thin air; and (2) where the traffic engineer’s alternative is positively dangerous (such as the widely-ignored idea that it’s better to force cyclists to turn right off Dumfries Place into Station Terrace, rather than going straight across Queen Street from Park Place to Charles Street).
You’ll also find that cyclists don’t tend to like pavement facilities — the one at the junction of Arran Street and Cottrell Road is a good example of what’s wrong with them — motorists tend to park their cars across the dropped kerbs (where they would never park in the middle of a junction), pedestrians tend to be totally oblivious to the fact that there’s a cycle route crossing, and the sight-lines are generally dreadful. In fact, if you’re licensing anyone, perhaps pedestrians need to take a test before they’re allowed to walk alongside cycle lanes: virtually every time I use the subway in front of City Hall, some pedestrian feels an urge to veer across the line and try to throw himself under my wheels. Off-road facilities tend to be most required where the traffic engineers will refuse to put them, such as the Newport Road between Station Terrace and Four Elms Road — i.e. the sort of place they would put them as a matter of course in Amsterdam.
“Weaving in and out of traffic” = motorists who can’t queue in a straight line at traffic lights in an attempt to obstruct you from getting into the advanced cycle facility.
I put it to you that the supposed improvements to the roads don’t benefit cyclists either. What’s needed is not some absurd expensive licensing scheme, but to sort out our useless traffic engineers. There is a lot of street clutter around the city that makes things dangerous for cyclists. We need to un-block streets, remove speed cushions (or at least ensure that they’re aligned so that the level part is 3-4ft from parked cars, not in the middle of the road) and pinch points, put traffic lights onto flashing amber at night (rather than relying on sensors), mark off-road cycle lanes properly (get out the green paint) and make sure they actually end reasonably, and most importantly of all, get rid of the dangerous, counter-productive cycle ban on Queen Street.
I can actually agree with both Duncan H and Paul G, but suffice it to say bad drivers, bad cyclists and bad pedestrians are simply bad people. Inconsiderate to others whether they’re on the roads or not. It is difficult to legislate against them for they will always be inconsiderate.
Anyway, that’s my considered response. Great blog though!
All, thanks for the comments so far. Glad this piece has been answered in the slightly mischievious spirit it was written.
James D – they’ll always be exceptions. If there weren’t, the Daily Mail would go out of business with no injustices to get upset over. I know many of the places you speak of because I cycle where I can in the city, too. I would argue that many of the so-called road improvements are utterly pointless as the state of the roads is the biggest issue in Cardiff. And yes, I put that down to council officers more interested in social engineering than providing services to ratepayers.
However, I think the case for cycling could be greatly enhanced if there were less idiots riding bikes. Sure, there are more in cars, but that’s because there are more cars. The cycling the wrong way down a street is usually chavs furiously bouncing around on their dual suspension mountain bikes, and is indicative of their general lack of concern for the world around them and the people in it. Hit them in the pocket and you’ll make them concerned. We can make better citizens…
Dunc
A good piece, and a valiant attempt to bring a measure of peace to the benighted streets of our towns and cities. As a regular urban cyclist but only very occasional motorist (and ignoring Hunt’s quip) I could expound at length on the many crimes visited upon me by ignorant cabbies, daredevil motorcyclists and aggressive white van men. In fact, I’m convinced that the class of road user most likely to get me into a serious accident is the pedestrian who, for reasons that continue to evade me, still seem to think it acceptable to step into the road without even glancing back. Thanks especially to the woman who did so outside Blackfriars station last week, depositing around a quarter of her cup of coffee onto me, before tutting and stalking off.
I digress. I don’t think a licence is the answer because it makes the mistake of putting cyclists closer to motorists in the spectrum of road user. In fact, we are better thought of as rolling pedestrians than as slow moving motorists (this isn’t my idea, by the way). You wouldn’t think it right to penalise a pedestrian for crossing the road on a red light, nor should you for cyclists. Clearly, however, if a motorist does it, it could be very serious indeed. Similarly, drivers should be encouraged to think of cyclists in the same way they do of pedestrians, rather than as slow drivers blocking their way.
Duncan, you write: “The police can prosecute cyclists who ride dangerously, carelessly, ignore traffic signs or signals, cycle on the pavement or commit any other road traffic offence. These offences carry maximum fines between £500 and £2,500. Also, £30 fixed penalty notices can be issued for cycling on the pavement, by police and community wardens. But when have any of us heard of cyclists being prosecuted, particularly in relation to the bad incidences of bike riding we see each day on our roads?”
You also write: “Because there is no easy way of identifying bikes with their riders, all of the convictions would come from stop-on-sight.”
So, apart from the ability to ban a cyclist from cycling (and presumably force them into cars where they could do far more damage), what advantage does licensing cyclists have?
Am I wrong in understanding your argument to be that because motorists feel aggrieved that cyclists are being favoured (in a kind of Grandmother knits woolly mittens for teenager kind of way), cyclists should receive a public penalty ( the licence fee) to redress the balance?
Or from your “Hit them (the ‘chavs’) in the pocket and you’ll make them concerned.” in the last commment, are you trying to price certain people off their bikes so that only those of us with a certain bloody minded determination will keep using our bikes?
Iestyn,
Let’s roll it back. Why do we have laws? I would suggest they are there to maintain and develop civilised society, to allow us to live happily with one another. I make it quite clear in the piece that such legislation would be partly aimed at taking away some of the aggression aimed at cyclists, who are perceived to get away with traffic violations where motorists are not.
However, that is a benefit rather than the purpose of this suggestion. There is a system of punishing bad cycling, but it clearly is not working. The point of the licence would be to gather up the ways of dealing with this issue and give it new purpose. Laws do become tired, or obselete, and I see this as a way of dealing with that while bringing some even-handedness in treatment to all road users. Do we agree here that a chav (yes, not afraid to use the word) riding the wrong way up a street can create an accident that is at least as serious as one caused by a motorist? Yes? Then that person needs to be dealt with.
The reason I suggested a contract, if you like, that must be signed before a licence is issued, is to keep the price down. For the pleasure of riding your bike on the roads of this country, always and forever, would you be prepared to fork out a fiver? I know I would. It’s approximately 1% of the cost of my latest bike – and I built that myself, so it would have been twice as much had I bought it already assembled.
The only way you get priced off a bike is if you keep breaking the law. Since this is the same as would happen with a car, I would suggest precedent in this area.
I am waiting for someone to suggest that this idea somehow undoes our efforts to reduce carbon emissions and increase fitness levels. That argument is, frankly, bollocks, because it suggests that certain antisocial and sometimes dangerous behaviour can be ignored because the higher ideal is too important. No, you can observe the law and achieve these aims, too. Such thinking is far too commonplace, far too fascistic, and I would be ready to step outside and fight anyone over such a suggestion.
I agree with Duncan’s points.
A test system would ensure that cyclists are aware of how to cycle safely. Visible licensing of bikes would ensure that those cyclists who threaten pedestrian safety can be identified and, if necessary, prosecuted.
Cyclists frequently ride at high speed on pavements in Cardiff. This is dangerous – imagine a child being hit by a bike and rider going at 10mph. It is also intimidating for pedestrians. It should be possible to walk the streets of a capital city without having to look backwards to check for cyclists all the time.
It is not enough for cyclists to complain about traffic management systems. If a cycle lane ends at a pavement, then walk the bike along the pavement, don’t ride it. If you are in a hurry, then ride it on the road.
As for sustainability – what happens to that when all the pedestrians are scared off the pavements and into cars?
Douglas Friedli – Duncan’s licence would not be visible, I’m afraid, so no change there.
Duncan – I misunderstodd your commetn about hitting Chavs in the pocket. Fines I agree with, but surely if the punishments already exist, then its a case of encouraging the Police to apply them. I don’t really see that a £5 licence would make much of a difference.
A particular anomaly in comparison with car licences is that anybody may ride a bike with no control until they are 16, and then suddenly have to be licenced. I wonder if there is precedent to that arrangement?
I can fully understand Duncan’s angst here. Who can’t? I for one would like to licence walking for slow pedestrians who can’t cross the street quick enough, or who meander in the neighborhood supermarket parking lot –getting in my way from getting the closet parking space to the door.
If they can’t keep a quick enough pace, then they risk injury not only to themselves but to other commuters as well!
All joking aside, I read this… “Anyone over the age of 16 found in possession of a bike and no licence (as opposed to not having it on them) should be fined and banned.”… And my jaw dropped.
No new taxes! And that is what a licence is really. And in my opinion, it would become more a burdon on children, young adults, and those without excessive disposable income to spend on the new tax.
Clearly this goes overboard. Let’s take our quos from the Netherlands, who probably has the highest per capital of cycle citizens in Europe. They do not have pedantic ordinances on cyclists, or cumbersome licensing just to own a bike. Remember, with licensing comes fees. If there are ‘cycle v motorist v pedestrian’ accidents, then the judicial system is well equipped to handle them. Perhaps a judge may send someone to cycling etiquette class or something, but licensing and fining for cyclists goes too far.
I feel that there should be far greater investment into cycling, and look to the Dutch as a model to emulate here. More cyclist paths should be created and included in road planning (Attention: Deputy First Minister!) so that accidents may be avoided in future.
No ! No! Duncan i disagree here mate..
we need people to cycle more and more….we need to get lazy fat people out of their 4 by 4′s and onto their bicycles.
we need to have dedicated cycleways in cardiff, aberystwyth and Swansea.
It’s a green, enjoyable, healthy , non-polluting form of exercise. What we need to do is get people out of their cars onto bicycles!
I cannot be bothered if cyclists feel aggrieved or resentful, they keep out of my way when i’m on my bike or i will bump them out of the way or i will have alittle word in their ear at the traffic lights, i always keep a stone in my hand case i get knocked off, some way of retaliation cus there usualy gone!
EVERYBODY READING THIS GET OUT OF YER CAR ONTO A MOUNTAIN BIKE!
Gents, thank you for your robust debate today. I wanted to keep it at a certain level because cycling is a subject close to my heart and it was written on something quite close to a whim. Those of you who tested my thinking have probably guessed as much. By all means, keep it going, though. It may lead on to a Welsh Tour de France team one day. Why not? If it’s good enough for the Basques, it’s good enough for us…
Why stop with cyclists?
One of our local councillors has suggested a driving test system for people using mobility scooters as she feels they can be a menace to pedestrians.
Personally I think a licence for skateboarders is also a possibility, preventing them from trying any tricks on pavements or in public spaces until they reach a sufficiently high standard.
There’s scope for a crackdown on rogue shopping trolley pushers. Plus jail sentences for people who insist on pulling cases with wheels behind them in busy railway stations, tripping up fellow commuters
Perhaps we should consider tougher regulation for heelys wearers too?
After all, the poor motorist has to put up with so much hardship and not forgetting the stealth taxes imposed because they willingly break the speed limit. So it is only right everyone else has to suffer too.
All good suggestions, Grover. I shall lobby on your behalf…
In all seriousness, the issue here is speed. I have managed over 40mph on a road bike coming off the Rhigos. I have friends who claim faster. With the weight that I am, it would be close to getting hit by a truck load of bricks for any pedestrian I collide with at speed. No motability user, skateboarder, trolley user, suitcase carrier or heely wearer could manage that.
Car users should be fined for speeding, but so should cyclists. The speed limit doesn’t distinguish. It’s there because at anything over that speed, no matter what mode of transport, significant damage is caused to our bodies if we collide with one another. In a crash at 35mph, your skeleton will come to a quick halt but your organs will keep travelling. At that speed, your heart will turn down into the body and rupture two extremely important vessels connected to it. Unless you are lucky, there’s no way back. As a road safety officer once told me: “If humans were able to run at 30mph, we’d be extinct, because we’d all have died from smacking into trees.”
And you missed out lawn mowers.
I generally ride an aluminium Cannondale tourer with pedals than can accomodate cleats or normal shoes. As such given the speed I reach I generally favour riding on the roadway rather than shared pedestrian/cycle ways.
One thing that pedestrians often fail to appreciate when cyclists ‘buzz’ them is just how precise the cyclists control of her/his trajectory is. Part of the issue is that pedal bikes are entirely silent, so the pedestrian has no warning of their approach. I’ve found a bell to be counterproductive BTW as by the time the pedestrian i’m approaching hears it, i’m virtually on top of them and if they turn around to check what the noise is – thus changing course – violent evasive action on my part can be necessary to avert collision. I quite often hang a powerful whistle around my neck, which is IMHO the only effective means of attracting attention when strictly necessary – e.g. descending Rhigos.
As said, I generally prefer roads, but an exception is the Taff Trail which runs virtually right past my home and is so heavilly used by cyclists that the pedestrians are acclimatised to expect us. Generally speaking the TT is pretty well designed, but there is a horror section at the underpass immediately downsteam of the Millenium Stadium, where pedestrains and cyclists pass under the railway. About 3 – 4 years back, Cardiff Council obtained funding under Section 106 planning gain from the Unite Student flats development on the Avana Bakery site to improve the underpass. Astoundingly the morons who run the Council decided to resurace the whole thing and enhance the lighting – but they didn’t widen the narrow ‘slipway’ down from Tudor Street, instead preserving the steps alongside which are presumably intended for pedestrians, but are in practice not used by anybody heading to or from town. This idiotic makeover perpetuates the funnelling of cyclist and pedestrians together in a narrow space and the resurfacing has only served to speed cyclists up. The way this project was done serves to show the total ignorance of Cardiff’s highways chiefs over elementary principles of design to enable cyclists and pedestrians to share space safely.
Whilst accepting that a person doing 30 kph on a bike can certainly do some damage to a pedestrian, in the event of a collision s/he is also equally likely to seriously injure her/him self! There is therefore a powerful self preservation consideration for cyclists which does not apply to those sitting inside a steel box. When one is cycling the high side on a busy road, it is hard not to be keenly aware that a single slip, someone opening a car door without first checking the mirror, or an HGV turning left without indicating could well be curtains. While I was working in the Assembly just after the New Year in (I think it was 2007) my Sunday morning was rudely interrupted by breaking reports on Sky News that 4 cyclists had been killed outright by a motorist in my employer’s constituency (actually it turns out they were a few hundred yards outside). The motorist, whose tyres were defective recieved 6 points and a three figure fine. I don’t want to go too far into the detail of one case, but my point is that any cyclist knows full well that the consequences of bad driving drastically outweigh those of mistakes or errors by cyclists. I fully accept that there are irresponsible cyclists, but their irresponsibility rarely kills or seriously injures, whereas lapses by motorists all too often kill both pedestrians and cyclists – hence the reason why the law treats them differently. I’m a driver as well as a cyclist and I think I ‘get’ both sides of the argument, but motor vehicles kill around a 1,000 people a year, compared to one person every two years who dies in a collision with a cyclist.
Licencing cyclists is impracticable for many reasons. As Duncan points out himself, largely sensible road traffic laws already exist. Enforcement of the rules is important for all road users. However, the consequences of transgressions by motorists are likely to be far more serious than those by cyclists. Perhaps what we need is to get more of our cops out of their cars and on their bikes where they would be better positioned to chase and catch offenders? If pedestrian safety is Duncan’s main concern, surely he should be arguing for universal 20mph limits in every residential street in Wales?