Do you have ze Papers?
Toronto Councillor Michael Walker wants to force Toronto cyclists to get licences for riding of said bikes. Adults, as well, should have to wear helmets, lest they crack their pretty heads open. Free choice? Not in Michael Walker’s city!
It is, however, the licence issue that’s most troubling. It may be an excusable request if the problem was rampant bikers who don’t know how to ride their bikes. A course, plus a test for every body’s safety, perhaps. But listen to Walkers reason for wanting licensing:
Currently, there is no requirement for a cyclist to carry personal identification…
Micheal Walker doesn’t want you riding around in his city if he can’t tell who you are and, we presume, if you belong.
Car, motorcycle, boat, sitting beside a pond fishing, all require a licence. Now Michael Walker thinks cycling should require a licence, at the same time as the City of Toronto is trying to get more people to ride bikes – a conflict of priorities if ever there was one. However, Walker’s stated reason, because you should have to carry identification, is chilling. If he gets his way there will be one method you can go to leave the house that wouldn’t require handy identification: walking. How long before the likes of Michael Walker decide that’s not safe enough, and identification is required, so it is not “difficult for police?”
At that stage, you can no longer go under the mantle of free citizen.
freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, pimply minions of bureaucracy, Toronto: Not in a Death Spiral
I think licensing cyclists is a great idea. This will stop all those troublesome York Region cyclists from riding south of Steeles Avenue. Come to think of it, the City of Toronto controls all of Steeles. No riding on Steeles unless you live in Toronto and have a cyclist licence.
Licensing will also prevent those pesky people who travel across the country and ask for donations for some cause. Those Trans-Canada cyclists will have to skip Toronto.
If they had licenses they could be ticketed and fined for infractions just as are motorists. That is the way it is in Europe where cyclists obey the traffic rules. Then the Toronto cyclists will stop coming to York region on the weekends riding 10 abreast and blocking traffic.
I am all for lisensing cyclists and their vehicles. Once upon a time they did need to have a lisense here.
The first think that comes to mind when I read that, is that ID is required to write someone a ticket for violations of traffic laws. In theory, anyone on a bike who could provide no identification to police could flaunt the law with impunity by simply giving a fake name.
Do we licence the bike itself or the rider? Or both? Will it require a test to get a bike operators licence? Will it only count for the city of Toronto? This seems to be an idea from a councillor who just can’t come up with anything more useful.
Perhaps it will be like the boaters so-called licence. I took the test at a booth at a flea market. It took me twenty minutes, with no studying, and I hadn’t driven a boat in years.
IT WAS A BLOODY USELESS CASH GRAB!