Originally Posted by Thor29
There is and will never be any reason to require bicyclists to get licenses or to register bicycles. It is quite obvious that requiring drivers licenses for cars doesn't keep idiots from driving, at best it slows them down a little when they have to take the test multiple times.
The main reason governments implement registration fees for cars is simply to raise revenue. The only reason they don't do the same thing for bicycles now is that cycling just isn't sufficiently popular to generate enough revenue to cover the administrative costs. Governments have already looked into it (I can think of about three State governments in this country alone), and will probably do so again. The thing we need to remember here is that government policy is not driven by morals or concerns about what "should" happen. It's driven by votes first and revenue second.
At present there aren't enough cyclists to raise sufficent revenue for registration fees to be ecomomical, or cause sufficent concern for people to start demanding licencing or registrations in large numbers. However, a whole heap of unskilled people taking up cycling would change that in a hurry.
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