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Off-road bill failure pleases BMF
The British Motorcyclist's Federation (BMF) has announced its satisfaction with the news that a bill proposing mandatory registration for all off-road vehicles has collapsed.
Suggested by MP Graham Stringer as a means of discouraging antisocial mini-moto use, the bill nonetheless attracted strong criticism from pressure groups and the government alike and has now been dropped.
Although the BMF stated that it recognised Mr Stringer's good intentions, it claimed that this measure would have merely led to off-road bikes of all types, even those being displayed in museums, unnecessarily having to bear a registration plate.
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Government relations executive Chris Hodder explained: "Using public concerns about mini-motos and the like to bring in superfluous legislation would have been ineffective in addressing the problem, discriminatory against motorcycling and would have caused hardship and hassle for the hundreds of thousands of legitimate off-road users."
In the BMF's opinion, motorcyclists who illegally ride bikes without insurance, tax or registration are unlikely to be convinced to display a registration plate and that the solution to the problem is therefore better policing instead.
Other groups that opposed the bill included the Motorcycle Retailers' Association, which had strongly campaigned against its implementation and concurred with the BMF on the need for Britain's roads to be better policed.
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