A motoring campaigner is asking for the British government to introduce a tax for cyclists using the roads. Mike Rutherford, founder of the Motorists Association, also suggests that cyclists should have to pay for insurance.

Rutherford who is backing Express.co.uk’s campaign ‘Get Britain Moving’ feels that cyclists should be contributing to the upkeep of roads.

As part of the Express’ campaign, they have set up an online petition which states “I call upon the Department of Transport to act now to significantly reduce the unacceptable traffic congestion blighting Britain’s roads”

Rutherford said on the newspaper’s website: “If cyclists want their dedicated lanes and cycle lanes surely they like drivers, plane users and boat users, should pay for the access. £50 is not a lot and it would help.

“Cyclists should pay their way. Drivers are one of the highest taxed motorists in the world and he or she pay their motoring related taxes, which total about £60billion a year. I don’t know why cyclists are the only ones who are let off from the charges.”

Rutherford also feels that cyclists should also be required to have insurance. “Cyclists should be insured. They can run people over and kill them and hurt them,” Rutherford said. “It’s happened, so there should be insurance for bikes.”

31 COMMENTS

  1. Create a cycling infrastructure to rival other cycling friendly countries and I would consider it a good idea… However, we can’t be asked to pay tax for the roads that to be fair are pretty poor for cycling on at times, in addition to the car tax that many of us already pay. That would essentially be asking people to pay extra to help protect the environment and stay fit.

  2. Why should cyclist pay road tax? Motorised vehicles don’t.
    I presume what he meant was that we should pay have vehicle a vehicle excise licence which is nothing to do with the roads. If that is the case then we would be zero rated as VEL rates are based on emissions. So by all means issue a VEL but all it achieves is a waste of public money to administer it.
    As for insurance very many people are covered for 3rd party risks already.

  3. Someone who drives a diesel and only pays £20-30 a year tax, should they only drive at the weekends so that inefficient polluting cars that pay £200-500 a year car drive more? Must be the case as drivers think that if a bicycle doesn’t pay tax that they should t be on the road!

  4. Fair enough, then we should change the charge to be more representative. Motor car weighs substantially more than a bicycle, and so should pay substantially more .e.g to keep it simple; cyclist plus bike 100kg, car 1000kg therefore pays 10 times more

  5. Funny actually but when I received my tax statement from HMRC it gave a breakdown of where my tax and national insurance contributions went to and Department for Transport ws one of them and my contribution worked out around £250. So as a cyclist yes I do pay toward the upkeep of the roads and fully exercise my right to use them. As for killing or injuring people on the roads or pavements put enough crossing places in and force people to think before they act. I can’t remember the last time I set out to injure someone.

  6. Seems like he’s an uninformed motorists who just hates cyclists being on the roads.

    Thete are plenty who think and believe the higheays is fir cars and cyclists are a nuisance.

    He probably fails to realised plenty of cyclists pay VED already.

    Road tax as he calls it went many years ago.

    There are probably 10 people a year killed by cyclists how about dealing with the 3000+ killed bu motorists ?

Leave a Reply to Martin Montague Cancel reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here