You didn't read my post. My point was that running a red light (along with riding on the pavement, riding without lights at night, etc) would give the police an excuse to stop you and ask for ID.
I can't even remember the last time I saw a police car at red lights. Besides the police already can arrest you if they see you doing those things, they don't.
You can keep skirting this issue, but you can't get around it, the only way for it to be enforceable is to randomly stop and ask for ID. Otherwise it's far to easy to slap on any number plate and you will
never be caught..
So back to square one, the police having to randomly stop and ask for ID.
Do you find that acceptable or not?
As for the cost, can you tell me how many cyclists there are in this country (because I really don't know)?
Well no one knows, because they are not registered.
All that's known is about 2-3 million bikes are sold each year, and it's estimated 20 million or so are "in service"
Even if registration would cost 'millions'
'millions'
you seem doubtful, I can't see why.
The cost to send a letter to a house would reasonably be £1 (postage, stationary, time), even if you assume 50p instead, at least a third of houses have bikes, so that's 4 million pounds just to send a letter to bike owners, but this is the government £1.50 for a letter seems more realistic.
Applications would have to be checked, staff costs, offices, even before the cost of policing you'll easily rack up tens of millions in costs, all to be paid every year, Sweden dumped license plates for bikes precisely because it was expensive to run.
A driving license costs £50 for a reason, that pays for the DVLA administration (and they still get tax money).
So you either give em away free (there is your millions, and hundreds of millions over years), or you make people pay.
£50 pounds is a lot to someone on minimum or less, now what if they have 2 kids with bikes and themselves, that's £150 pounds.
That's not chump change, and all for what?[/b]