As car use is discouraged, Thomas Mitchell asks whether requiring cover to ride a bike on the road would be a good idea

In June 2023, the Italian Government sought to make changes to road safety laws which would have required cyclists to wear helmets, carry number plates and have liability insurance.

To date, these laws have not been implemented, but many in the UK believe cyclists should have insurance. A YouGov survey of 1,763 UK adults revealed 64 per cent believed cyclists should be required to have insurance against accidents.

This is a worryingly high figure in isolation, but consider it against a wider picture; 73 per cent of drivers wanting cyclists to wear hi-vis and new laws recently brought in for causing death by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling. In that context, perhaps those who argue for the requirement for cyclists to have insurance reflects the general “anti-cyclist” attitude many road users have, as opposed to a genuine concern to insure oneself against risk.

Will we soon be seeing number plates on the back of bicycles?

Often forgotten in the raging ‘them vs us’, cyclist/motorist debate is the “why”.

“Why should cyclists have insurance against accidents?” If you were to ask this question to one of those 64 per cent in the YouGov poll, they might speak of the damage a cyclist could cause to a car, or a pedestrian.

However, this is where the argument for cycle liability insurance falls down. On a fundamental level, insurance is mitigation against the risk of harm occurring - the risk that injury or damage could occur and the harm being the outcome of any failure to mitigate against that risk, be it injury or death.

In my view, when a cyclist is involved in a collision with a vehicle, neither the risk nor potential to cause harm are present for the cyclist. The average male in the UK weighs 85kg. Add to that the weight of his bicycle – another 10kg. That’s 95kg of mass moving through a city centre at no more than 15mph. The average kerb weight of a new car in the UK is 1,947kg. Add the occupant and you have a mechanically propelled 2,000kg killing machine capable of 0-60 in less than 8 seconds. If the cyclist and car collide, you don’t need to be a physicist to explain who the harm is going to occur to, or who needs to mitigate most against risk.

The other difficulty is enforcement and regulation. Where does a Government draw the line as to who requires insurance to ride their bicycle on the road and who doesn’t? Do children cycling to school need liability insurance? Does the mountain biker using the road to access a forest require insurance?

Once you’ve cleared the hurdle of which type of cyclist you are going to discriminate against, any Government introducing cycle liability insurance is going to have to consider how to enforce such measures. Will cyclists need little number plates hanging from their saddles? Will police chase down and pull over errant cyclists who don’t comply with the insurance requirements? When you really think about the “why” and the “how”, the whole argument for cycle insurance becomes a total nonsense.

Often proposals of this nature have nothing to do with road safety and more to do with a political agenda. I cannot foresee any UK Government ever introducing such measures because any perceived benefit is always going to be hugely overshadowed by the obvious and clear drawbacks of requiring insurance. Hopefully, common sense will prevail.

Thomas Mitchell is a Partner, Cycle Law Scotland

Should cyclists be forced to have insurance?