“You Don’t Even Pay Road Tax!”
Do cyclists get what they pay for?
So this afternoon, on my way back from the Team Valley, I dropped in to my local Apple dealer to see about some more memory for my PowerMac.
The guy I usually deal with was outside indulging in his recreational drug (nicotine), chatting with a friend of his. As I rode up, this guy looked at me, looked at the bike, and said,
I hate cyclists - you don’t even pay road tax.
How to win friends and influence people. Not.
So I tried the usual lines:
- Actually, I DO pay ‘road tax’, as I do also drive a car
- OK, so you’re right, I don’t pay tax on this vehicle (bike). But do you seriously believe that it creates as much wear and tear on the road as a car?
- Oh, so I shouldn’t be on the road anyway? Right. Here’s my thing - bikes, pedestrians and horses have a right to use the road. YOU are using it under license, which can be taken away from you.
At this point, the guy decided that he had to be going, and I think we were both thinking the same thing as he walked away:
Good grief - what a total a-hole.
So just in case you get into this kind of discussion and want a snappy comeback that’s even better than, “Yeah, well why don’t you just f*** off and die”, here’s some facts to have to hand:
- Road Tax (Road Fund Tax) was abolished in 1936. Since then, tax collected on vehicles (Vehicle Excise Duty - VED) has been part of the Treasury’s general tax income, spent on whatever the government see fit. It is not a hypothecated tax that raises revenue for roads.
- Tell them you pay ‘Road Tax’ at the same rate as the current models of the Ford Fiesta, VW Polo and Seat Ibiza. For climate change & environmental reasons, VED is based on a vehicle’s emissions, and currently all vehicles with emissions less than 100g CO2 per km traveled pay VED of £0.
- If the motorist you’re talking to still doesn’t want bikes on the road, ask where they should be. The usual response will be “On the pavement” (that’s the sidewalk if you’re over there), to which you can reply that you would ride on the pavement, but that would be a breach of Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835, amended by Section 85(1) of the Local Government Act 1888, which specifically extended the prohibition to include cycles.
- Finally, if all else fails, you can just point at the motorist’s flabby body and laugh. Because as we all know, cars really do make you fat.
I use all those arguments (although have been accidentally saying 1934 for road tax abolition!), but for me the crunch point is my ‘Whisky Argument”. I pay a big big wodge of tax into the Treasury every time I buy a bottle of whisky - but get no help from the government either to store the whisky or drink it. In fact, quite the opposite: the government would rather I didn’t drink it at all. This is just a ’sin tax’, or, to put it another way, a link in a long and inglorious history of governments raising revenue from things people want to own.
In exactly the same way, if someone pays vehicle excise duty - another tax on things people want to own - how can they expect any help to store their vehicles or use them when the whisky drinker gets none?
The fact VED payers do get given roads on which they can dump and drive their cars is actually quite a bonus for them. Smokers don’t get any help to smoke despite paying tax on their cigarettes - a very good analogy, given both the cars and the cigarettes are making the users unhealthy.
In fact, as I’ve said before, drivers and smokers are extremely similar in one way: they don’t just make themselves unhealthy through their lifestyle choices, but also inflict the risk on non-consenting people around them.
I get this mostly from taxi drivers. The reply “I don’t pay for sex either” is snappy, but does little to calm the situation
Motorists could really do with better writers - that road tax line is OLD.
cool post.
here’s some more arguments from copenhagenize.com
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2008/05/rewarding-cyclists.html
You SHOULD have said:
“I hate smokers. It’s got nothing to do with you paying tax, you’re just a prick for smoking and making me inhale your second hand smoke.”
In the US most of the secondary roads that are used by cyclists are paid out of property tax, which every body pays one way or the other. Not too many sidewalks where I live so they can’t really suggest I ride on them. The last time I was told to ride on the sidewalk I told them I couldn’t because I was afraid the clowns would eat me. LOL
Aaron
[...] John The Monkey said in a recent comment, people need better writers for this stuff - that’s such a lame [...]
I love this story. I’ll have to go look up the exact laws for the US, should I run into a similar species of ass clown. However most people here are just so flummoxed to see someone arrive somewhere on a bike that they are speechless.
[...] It’s a steep hill, so a bike goes down with the brakes on to keep it under the 30mph speed limit. But cars overtake anyway. Because as we know, they’re in a hurry, and unlike cyclists, they do pay road tax after all. [...]