Bring back the Road Fund!
- Thread starter HJ
- Start date
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brokenbetty said:
Wait a minute here?! So if I understand you correctly, Emily Pankhurst and her Suffragettes shouldn't have bothered with all that chaining themselves to railings and jumping under racehorse nonsense? Instead, they should have had cocks sewn on, embarked on a course of testosterone and retired to the smoking room with the other gentlemen?
Motes and beams has it in one, but it's not cyclists who need the eye surgery.
MacB
Lover of things that come in 3's
- Location
- Farnborough, Hampshire
Bollo said:
Excellent alternative for the Suffragettes how could those 'silly women' not have thought of that for themselves...........priceless
Cars and bikes are different vehicles.
Roll a car at a five year old child at 15 mph and see what happens.
Roll a bike at the child's grieving twin brother and the twin brother can walk away to his brother's funeral.
Cars are licenced and taxed because
1/ They are dangerous in the wrong hands.
2/ They are dangerous in the right hands.
Bikes ... 1/ do not have an internal combustion engine.
2/ are less than 800mm wide.
Cars ... 1/
[You can fill in the rest.]
Roll a car at a five year old child at 15 mph and see what happens.
Roll a bike at the child's grieving twin brother and the twin brother can walk away to his brother's funeral.
Cars are licenced and taxed because
1/ They are dangerous in the wrong hands.
2/ They are dangerous in the right hands.
Bikes ... 1/ do not have an internal combustion engine.
2/ are less than 800mm wide.
Cars ... 1/
[You can fill in the rest.]
rh100
Well-Known Member
I don't get it.
Why volunteer or accept road tax, insurance etc - essentially to keep other road users happy. Ask why does road tax exist? It's to raise revenue for the coffers - nothing to do with the roads. Why does insurance exist? Third party insurance only is required, this is to protect other road users, how much risk do you think you think you pose to other road users on a bike - although to be fair I could be convinced of the need for insurance to protect me from any kind of costs and claims from an accident.
So some of us could be all present and correct with the right paperwork - but it would mean bugger all to the dimwits who give the bad image of cyclists - they won't bother with paperwork the same as some motorists don't.
Motorists are so heavily regulated because the motor vehicle is dangerous to other people, and because it's a huge cash cow.
Are HGV driver's more highy thought of because of the extra costs and the higher grade licence they require to drive - some people aren't even aware of it. So why would they care if we pay £15 or not? They are only bothered about what 'they' have to pay to be on the road.
Why volunteer or accept road tax, insurance etc - essentially to keep other road users happy. Ask why does road tax exist? It's to raise revenue for the coffers - nothing to do with the roads. Why does insurance exist? Third party insurance only is required, this is to protect other road users, how much risk do you think you think you pose to other road users on a bike - although to be fair I could be convinced of the need for insurance to protect me from any kind of costs and claims from an accident.
So some of us could be all present and correct with the right paperwork - but it would mean bugger all to the dimwits who give the bad image of cyclists - they won't bother with paperwork the same as some motorists don't.
Motorists are so heavily regulated because the motor vehicle is dangerous to other people, and because it's a huge cash cow.
Are HGV driver's more highy thought of because of the extra costs and the higher grade licence they require to drive - some people aren't even aware of it. So why would they care if we pay £15 or not? They are only bothered about what 'they' have to pay to be on the road.
hackbike 666
Guest
marinyork said:
The layout at London bridge is just awful it's just a naff layout with left turning buses at the bottom.Always stopped at those lights then the next set 20 yards away and then the right turning set to Waterloo.The road layout needs revamping.
It's tight and there are a lot of buses/cabs there and a load of idiots as well..Wasn't there an accident there recently?
They are always working on Southwark or Blackfriars Bridge and guess.They have started digging up Waterloo Bridge to add to the fun.
brokenbetty
Über Member
- Location
- London
Bollo said:
Women got the vote because they stepped up and filled the jobs left by the men who went off to fight in the first world war. It was that, not the Suffragettes, that really made a difference.
History likes figureheads and grand statements, but the real world works better with communication and compromise.
If you hadn't worked it out, I wasn't being entirely serious. But, stretched far enough the analogy is still valid. Your argument seems to rest on the idea of sameness - to be treated better by other road users, we should be more like them. A step to becoming more like them is to pay what another road user might pay. That's the core of your argument right?
As we've discussed earlier though, any payment above a penny a year is an overpayment. Overpayment isn't compromise, its punishment.
But what's more fundamental here is that any idea of equality is simply unachievable. A person on a cycle is smaller, lighter, slower (in free traffic) - just weaker than a person in a car. I can pay all the road tax I like, but that isn't going to change.
A measure of civilisation is how well the strong in a society treat the weak. Our roads are, by the measure of everyday life, fabulously uncivilised places. Outside a few sink estates, I'll only ever encounter such a concentration of threats of violence, verbal abuse, tantrums, overt acts of impatience and selfishness while on the roads, irrespective of whether I'm driving or riding. Drivers are the spoilt children of society. How we got here I don't have a ready answer, but here we certainly are.
As the roads are uncivilised, there's a tacit acceptance that the strong may treat the weak badly - worse, that the strong should treat the weak badly. And cyclists are the 'weak'.
This situation skims uncomfortably close to the psychology of the prison camp. The camp guards don't despise the prisoners because the prisoners are actually guilty, they despise them precisely because they are powerless. In the guard's eyes, the prisoner is responsible for their own weakness, beyond redemption, in many cases even subhuman. All accusations of criminal behaviour, guilt and culpability by the dominant group are just sideshow justifications for the exercise of raw power. Unlike my Suffragettes analogy, I'm deadly serious about this one.
My paying a punitive tax to 'fit in' with the dominant group is flawed because it has absolutely no real impact on the dominant group. It might give me as a cyclist the feeling of entitlement to use the roads but, as you may have worked out I'm not lacking in that department already.
So, the real solution is to civilise our roads, by which I mean civilise the behaviour of the people who use the roads. This won't be achieved by a form of tarmac apartheid (and current cycle facilities certainly have a gimcrack township feel about them) or by me paying an emotional bribe to motorists not to treat me like crap. The change has to come largely in the attitudes of motorists themselves. You're right when you talk about compromise, but there's very little there for cyclists to compromise on.
If you've not already read it and can find a copy on the web, the TRL 549 report is an excellent view on drivers' attitudes to cyclists. Also look at Tom Vanderbilt's blog http://www.howwedrive.com/
As we've discussed earlier though, any payment above a penny a year is an overpayment. Overpayment isn't compromise, its punishment.
But what's more fundamental here is that any idea of equality is simply unachievable. A person on a cycle is smaller, lighter, slower (in free traffic) - just weaker than a person in a car. I can pay all the road tax I like, but that isn't going to change.
A measure of civilisation is how well the strong in a society treat the weak. Our roads are, by the measure of everyday life, fabulously uncivilised places. Outside a few sink estates, I'll only ever encounter such a concentration of threats of violence, verbal abuse, tantrums, overt acts of impatience and selfishness while on the roads, irrespective of whether I'm driving or riding. Drivers are the spoilt children of society. How we got here I don't have a ready answer, but here we certainly are.
As the roads are uncivilised, there's a tacit acceptance that the strong may treat the weak badly - worse, that the strong should treat the weak badly. And cyclists are the 'weak'.
This situation skims uncomfortably close to the psychology of the prison camp. The camp guards don't despise the prisoners because the prisoners are actually guilty, they despise them precisely because they are powerless. In the guard's eyes, the prisoner is responsible for their own weakness, beyond redemption, in many cases even subhuman. All accusations of criminal behaviour, guilt and culpability by the dominant group are just sideshow justifications for the exercise of raw power. Unlike my Suffragettes analogy, I'm deadly serious about this one.
My paying a punitive tax to 'fit in' with the dominant group is flawed because it has absolutely no real impact on the dominant group. It might give me as a cyclist the feeling of entitlement to use the roads but, as you may have worked out I'm not lacking in that department already.
So, the real solution is to civilise our roads, by which I mean civilise the behaviour of the people who use the roads. This won't be achieved by a form of tarmac apartheid (and current cycle facilities certainly have a gimcrack township feel about them) or by me paying an emotional bribe to motorists not to treat me like crap. The change has to come largely in the attitudes of motorists themselves. You're right when you talk about compromise, but there's very little there for cyclists to compromise on.
If you've not already read it and can find a copy on the web, the TRL 549 report is an excellent view on drivers' attitudes to cyclists. Also look at Tom Vanderbilt's blog http://www.howwedrive.com/
brokenbetty
Über Member
- Location
- London
Firstly, thank you for a considered and rational reply.
Not quite. It's not about being more like them, it's about being perceived as treated equitably. It is a bone of contention for drivers that they have to pay to use the roads and we don't. I think getting rid of that would help change drivers attitudes - it says firstly that the law sees us a real, grown up road users not kids on toys, and secondly that we see ourselves the same way. Right now, every cyclist who jumps a red light or hops on a pavement is sending the opposite message.
It's an overpayment the way "road tax" is calculated today, on emissions. But that's just an arbtrary way of doing it - you could just as easily have a flat fee of £15 then a sliding scale of emissions.
Sure, but as I said equality with cars isn't the goal, mature acceptance is.
That's great writing, and it is true to some extent, but it is a long way from the whole picture.
Let me tell you about my commute today. I got let out into the flow of traffic when I indicated. No one tried to overtake me when I did so. I waited at in line at traffic lights and no one tried to bully me out of the way. A digger passed too close, as he does every day. A white van passenger gave me the thumbs up. I played tag in and out of buslanes as the buses stopped and pulled away.
Ok, it's a short commute. But I didn't face any violence, acts of agression, verbal abuse or tantrums, and I did benefit from many little acts of courtesy and consideration. So my perception of drivers isn't of a half crazed group of bullies who need to be curbed by any means possible, it's of a bunch of mostly nice people in cars.
I don't need it to feel entitled to use the road - trust me, I have no problem at all about riding right in the middle and blocking traffic til I'm ready to be overtaken safely. The difference is somehow when I do it drivers seem to be fine about it.
Cyclecraft is very big on negotiation when you are on the road to smooth your interactions with drivers, because the letter of the law doesn't cut it. My views on the relationship between cyclists and drivers are an extension of this - we need to negotiate not demand.
You can't force someone to change by telling them they are in the wrong all the time. That's not how people work. If you want change you have to start with yourself. It might not be "fair", but we need to move from us- and-them to all-in-this-together and £15 or so a year seems a small price to pay.
Bollo said:
Not quite. It's not about being more like them, it's about being perceived as treated equitably. It is a bone of contention for drivers that they have to pay to use the roads and we don't. I think getting rid of that would help change drivers attitudes - it says firstly that the law sees us a real, grown up road users not kids on toys, and secondly that we see ourselves the same way. Right now, every cyclist who jumps a red light or hops on a pavement is sending the opposite message.
Bollo said:
It's an overpayment the way "road tax" is calculated today, on emissions. But that's just an arbtrary way of doing it - you could just as easily have a flat fee of £15 then a sliding scale of emissions.
Bollo said:
Sure, but as I said equality with cars isn't the goal, mature acceptance is.
Bollo said:
That's great writing, and it is true to some extent, but it is a long way from the whole picture.
Let me tell you about my commute today. I got let out into the flow of traffic when I indicated. No one tried to overtake me when I did so. I waited at in line at traffic lights and no one tried to bully me out of the way. A digger passed too close, as he does every day. A white van passenger gave me the thumbs up. I played tag in and out of buslanes as the buses stopped and pulled away.
Ok, it's a short commute. But I didn't face any violence, acts of agression, verbal abuse or tantrums, and I did benefit from many little acts of courtesy and consideration. So my perception of drivers isn't of a half crazed group of bullies who need to be curbed by any means possible, it's of a bunch of mostly nice people in cars.
Bollo said:
I don't need it to feel entitled to use the road - trust me, I have no problem at all about riding right in the middle and blocking traffic til I'm ready to be overtaken safely. The difference is somehow when I do it drivers seem to be fine about it.
Cyclecraft is very big on negotiation when you are on the road to smooth your interactions with drivers, because the letter of the law doesn't cut it. My views on the relationship between cyclists and drivers are an extension of this - we need to negotiate not demand.
Bollo said:
You can't force someone to change by telling them they are in the wrong all the time. That's not how people work. If you want change you have to start with yourself. It might not be "fair", but we need to move from us- and-them to all-in-this-together and £15 or so a year seems a small price to pay.
Churchill also stated that the problem of a road fund licence was that some motorists would claim ownership of the rads they had "paid for"
Could that still be true?
Would we get motorists claiming a higher right on the grounds they were paying this reinstated "road tax"?
Surely not.....
Could that still be true?
Would we get motorists claiming a higher right on the grounds they were paying this reinstated "road tax"?
Surely not.....
brokenbetty said:
The law doesn't see cyclists as toys at all. It takes cycling very seriously indeed. It's the people that see them as toys. Similar with enforcement of things done against cyclists.
Not paying "road tax" is an excuse, not a serious bone of contention. You could abolish VED tomorrow under some parallel world where roads repaired themselves by magic they'd say but you don't pay insurance. Get rid of that and it'd become fuel. Get rid of that and it'd just go further and further down the list.
What I do find amusing about your argument about equitableness is that you could start at the same premise and say that this was a justification for say VED bands being a lot wider and that if more high polluting cars paid ved of say £1000, then they'd see the difference other car users pay more clearly and then see that in the greater scheme of things that bicycles should be zero rated.
brokenbetty said:
There are an infinite number of ways you could design the system. This is constrained right down by any mature tax system i.e. (a) making it progressive (
minimum threshold, practicality and benefits vs cost of collection and bureaucratic burden (c) dealing with the behaviours you want to change.(a) could support a tax on cyclists, (
makes it a more or less total waste of time under virtually any circumstances and (c) polishes it off completely because the behaviours we want to do is discourage car use and encourage cycling and not the other way round.
