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.”
Sure…when drivers do… VED isn’t RoadTax (oh, and bikes would be zero rated VED anyway!) 😉
poor Mike is delusional
Does he not know that it’s not a road tax but a motor vehicle tax he pays?Tax bikes & you’d have to tax horses too.
So something like a Skoda Octavia Estate 1.6L TDI is exempt from ‘road tax’ due to low emissions and he wants to tax a bike?
What a prat. Is he going to tax joggers, pedestrians, dog-walkers and utilities too?
my electric car is VED exempt but he wants to tax my bike!!! Really what a doosh
What about electric cars which pay no tax? Should we ban them? Some people are SO ignorant as to what car tax is for.
Also Band A cars are tax exempt.
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.
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.
I have a van, a car, and two motorcycles which cost a lot in tax.. Why on earth should I tax my bike? We should be encouraging cycling!
I don’t drive, as a taxpayer I pay for the roads! It doesn’t come from the VED tax paid.
The truth is Simon, I agree that none of the VED goes on the roads. We all pay for the roads from taxes and it makes little difference to anyone that a bike uses the roads.
Stupid ass
A complete moron. Shame on the Daily Express for giving credibility to a load of nonsense.
He should be on the pills I’m on. Lol
Stupid man. TYPICAL
Cock
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!
I’ll keep that in mind 😀
Lol
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
The man’s quite clearly puddled
Car tax dosnt get spent on the roads anyway so what would cycling tax be spent on???
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.
How do you expect Good cyclists to pay tax ? when there are so many who ride around in the dark with NO lights, keep breaking the rules of the road
Perhaps Rutherford should pay extra for his future NHS usage ?
Does he forget that most cyclist are also car owners and no road users pay road tax
#propertit
How did this buffoon, eeejot half bake, whatever, ever get to be a motoring campaigner? Can anyone tell me?
Right yeah how do you measure the emissions then. Does it vary on diet. What l load of rubbish go back to something you were almost good at.
It’s only what I’d expect from The Express. It’s only one step behind The Mail for stupidity
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 ?
not sure enough consideration has been given to this call