Sunday, April 04, 2010

The more things change...

This snippet, from the New York Times, is surely good. Apparently people with Parkinson's disease are still able to ride their bikes. How cheery. Some consolation I suppose.

It almost makes up for the tired idiocy coming out of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Cyclists should be licensed and pay registration? Call yourselves a think tank chaps, for coming to the strikingly original conclusion that scofflaw cyclists are a major menace to society. You could have picked your timing a little better: rather than the same day the government announces a top anti-gang cop will head a new strike force gunning for drivers who continually flout the law. No that seems like a higher priority to me.

And as for registration, I will cheerfully pay to ride my bike on public roads when the facilities and the level of subsidies granted to cycling approaches the billions spent in an increasingly futile bid to make life easier for for motorists. And I won't whinge nearly so much as the car lobby and the motoring organisations, all gorged on the taxpayer dollar. But somehow I don't reckon I'm in any danger of needing to worry about it anytime soon.

1 comment:

Chris L said...

Obviously the chamber of commerce people ran out of fingers to count. Otherwise, they would have realised that the whole cyclists' rego thing has already been considered in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia (and several American states) and been rejected due to being econonically unviable.

The question isn't whether cyclists should/would pay a rego fee, the question is whether all the other taxpayers want to subsidise a system that would run at a loss. I think we know the answer to that one.