United Kingdom VI: Summer Lovin'

[Soundwave]

The exemption is an incentive to encourage the transition to a more environmentally sustainable form of personal transport. That’s how many countries are doing this, incentives...

If they want an incentive to switch then make them significantly cheaper than a petrol or diesel alternative not ludicrously expensive
I don't know anyone who thinks they are a viable proposition & that's before you get into the logistics of charging at home as I said in my other post not everyone has the luxury to just switch to an EV over Petrol or Diesel

[MartyG]

Current car tax for my car works out as an avg 0.012p or less per mile, if they want to do this and do it in a fair way then they need to tackle the nonsense of fuel duty and insurance costs first.

The tax on petrol works out at about 5p a mile based on a car that does 50 MPG - tax on petrol and diesel runs at 57.95 pence per litre. There are 4.546 litres in a gallon, so £2.63 for every gallon.

30 MPG = 0.088p
40 MPG = 0.066p
50 MPG = 0.054p
.
.
.
220 MPG = 0.012p

So, that plus Vehicle Duty (£580 max prior 2017, £2,175 after 2017) and driving around in a car provides a lot of income for the government - it will be calculated to generate a similar level of revenue, if indeed they decide to go down that route. In 2019, electric car sales accounted for about 1% of vehicle sales globally and isn't accelerating (see what I did there) particularly fast due to some of the issues above, so it's not something that's going to happen in the near future.

An electric car would be completely viable for the miles I do as a cager - if I could afford a Model S or a Taycan I definitely get one. The Volkswagen ID 3 isn't bad either and those new are similar price to a Golf GTI.

Like it or not, sales of EVs will take a higher percentage of new car sales with the next 10-20 years due to a combination of rising fuel costs and government legislation.

Then we can start to worry about the shortage of precious metals and rising costs of those to meet the demands of EVs

[Hirst]

Road pricing is proposed every few years and it never gets anywhere, long may that continue. I'm not keen on having the government (particularly this government) keeping exact tabs on where I'm driving, let alone seeing what mischief criminals could get up to with the data as it inevitably leaks out. There's already a problem with criminals stealing cars to order by accessing owner data through the system used for car park fines (which more-or-less any idiot can get access to without much bother).

Personally I think that charging zero tax on EVs was a ridiculous idea as it was clearly only going to be sustainable if nobody really bought them. They should have focused on reducing the costs of people getting them in the first place, which would have also encouraged existing EV owners to renew them more often and increased the pool of available used EVs. This situation was just creating a problem that didn't really need to exist to save some people a fairly nominal amount of money that I doubt few would have really cared that much about. Was having to pay a couple hundred quid a year in tax really the make-or-break factor? I probably spend more than that on petrol station samosas.

[Brad]

We currently have a car and declared Statutory Off Road Notification and are now not paying tax for that car so from that perspective we are not being taxed for owning that car, we are taxed if we want to drive it on public roads so it really is actually ‘permission to drive on the road’ tax.

I don’t get why we don’t just tax fuel and be done with it. That wrx sti will pay more tax because it burns more fuel. Likewise the big lorries. The EVs obviously don’t use petrol or diesel so effectively aren’t taxed. Simples.

[Neon Ignition]

License plates on bicycles, fined £1,000 every time someone runs a red light. They'd have more than enough by the time the next financial quarter hit

[Asura]

License plates on bicycles, fined £1,000 every time someone runs a red light. They'd have more than enough by the time the next financial quarter hit

As a cyclist, I would welcome some sort of charge for road use.

But when that happens, I'm traffic and motorists are going stay the **** out of my way just as much as they would another car (like they're supposed to do already, but I digress).

The gov't can spend the money on additional cycle lanes, and mandatory cyclist sensitivity training for motorists who don't obey the rules. Said training will be arduous. There'll be a test. And you'll only be able to book it at 4am on a Tuesday.

[Dogg Thang]

License plates on bicycles, fined £1,000 every time someone runs a red light. They'd have more than enough by the time the next financial quarter hit

You're not wrong. Also can we put rear view mirrors on bikes? There is absolutely no reason why bikes shouldn't have rear view mirrors. Both as someone who has seen cyclists swerve in front of people without seeing them and also as a cyclist who has navigated city traffic in a place hostile to cyclists, it feels like rear view mirrors would benefit everyone.

But yeah, with you on the red lights. And while we're at it, prison sentences when a car driver does it because they can kill a kid instantly and, while of course not even in the same ball park compared with cyclists, where I am it is all too common.

[fishbowlhead]

As a cyclist, I would welcome some sort of charge for road use.

But when that happens, I'm traffic and motorists are going stay the **** out of my way just as much as they would another car (like they're supposed to do already, but I digress).

The gov't can spend the money on additional cycle lanes, and mandatory cyclist sensitivity training for motorists who don't obey the rules. Said training will be arduous. There'll be a test. And you'll only be able to book it at 4am on a Tuesday.

Cyclists don’t belong on the road full stop. No ifs, not buts, they should be off the road and out the way of traffic for good into cycle lanes.

Im sick of being stuck behind dhead cyclists in the middle of the road at 10mph with no helmet or high vis on, going on their merry way because they have nothing else to be doing.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I have seen some absolutely insane cycling.
One guy cruised through a red-light on a 4 way junction weaving through moving cars.
I had a guy stop at a T junction on my right, put his hand on my bonnet and when it was clear to go he turned left across the front of my car.
I saw an old guy go the opposite way around a round a bout.

[Dogg Thang]

Cyclists don’t belong on the road full stop. No ifs, not buts, they should be off the road and out the way of traffic for good into cycle lanes.

Im sick of being stuck behind dhead cyclists in the middle of the road at 10mph with no helmet or high vis on, going on their merry way because they have nothing else to be doing.

Yep. I'd be all for them cutting down car lanes and closing some off to make room for new separate cycling lanes and routes. It would benefit both drivers and cyclists. And the easier and safer it is to cycle in a city, the more cyclists you'll have which will in turn ease car traffic. Everybody wins. Invest in cycling properly rather than throwing them together with traffic, creating a hostile environment, and a lot of these problems get minimised.

[fishbowlhead]

Even London hasn’t got cycle lanes everywhere, its a ridiculous situation.

Also the whole kids riding INTO traffic doing wheelies needs to be nocked on the head already, or, zero penalty’s for drivers nocking them off, one of two will sort it out i guess.

[Golgo]

Yep. I'd be all for them cutting down car lanes and closing some off to make room for new separate cycling lanes and routes. It would benefit both drivers and cyclists. And the easier and safer it is to cycle in a city, the more cyclists you'll have which will in turn ease car traffic. Everybody wins. Invest in cycling properly rather than throwing them together with traffic, creating a hostile environment, and a lot of these problems get minimised.

The last 'big' investment in cycle lanes in the UK was back under John Prescott's watch. A pissant two million quid, all of it spent on white paint to mark out those little suicide lanes along roads that were already too narrow.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep. Here in Dublin a big part of the problem is that the city evolved with absolutely no town planning. So our infrastructure is in no way close to being fit for purpose for 2020 life. Even just down the road from me, they did (to their credit), put in a whole bunch of cycle lanes... BUT... in doing so, the road that they left for the cars could fit roughly around 40% of a car. Not even one of those little Smart cars could fit on the road without driving through the cycle lane. In other places, they paint cycle lanes and then open it up to parking. Seriously. We have parked cars in cycle lanes. It's bad for cyclists which, in turn, is bad for motorists.

Edit: Oh, and then they ran a campaign saying that motorists should keep something like a 2 meter distance when passing cyclists. In some places, that would take a car over the other side of the road, past the footpath and into the building on the other side.

[Neon Ignition]

That's exactly the issue, the Government keeps pushing cycling hard whilst implementing it in the worst way possible. Our nearest bypass has a cycle lane running alongside most of it but cyclists don't use it, instead cycling in road lanes of vehicles driving at 40-60mph.

There's a big issue around areas where suitable cycling spaces can't be built (I'm not a big fan of the idea that cars need to give the same space considerations to cyclists as they do cars as it's an unrealistic measure. Other cars don't coast along the lane at 8mph so you don't need to overtake in the first place, overtaking giving the space instructed basically means driving in the oncoming lane for every single car that comes up behind them. This either creates a immense road hazard or the drivers hang back and you get huge amounts of congestion undermining the concept outright).

Where suitable measures have been implemented there should be a way to make a cyclist account for road safety and the rules at the least.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/covid-tier-system-for-england-under-review-says-minister

The predictable Xmas Lockdown workaround begins to form as as the Communities Secretary says the Tier system is under review before Lockdown can end, countdown to Tier 4 begins in...