More Bureaucratic Silliness
Motorized bicycles might look like a solution to the rising oil price and global warming, but a court ruling has found some cannot be legally used on NSW roads - even though the Roads and Traffic Authority previously advised owners they could.
People have previously been told that they did not require registration, and all users had to do was wear a helmet and obey the road rules. As many as 10,000 such bikes, known as E-bikes, may have been sold in NSW on the basis.that the law specifies that “pedal cycles” with “one or more auxiliary propulsion motors” up to 200 watts do not require registration.
However in May last year, Deborah Alice Matheson was riding her Eazyride bike on a street in Nyngan at about 30 kilometres an hour, using its motor, when she was stopped by police. She was charged with driving an unregistered vehicle. She was convicted at Nyngan local court this year and fined $500. Last Thursday week, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, without recording a conviction. Justice Peter Johnson found the magistrate who found Ms Matheson guilty had not erred in ruling that the bike motor was not “auxiliary” but primary, and its pedal power was secondary.
One cyclist, Craig Donarski, has been riding his electric bicycle to work almost every day for two years. He says the trip from Lilyfield to Circular Quay takes him 22 minutes, and it costs him about 10cents to 12cents a week in electricity to charge the batteries on his bike.
“It’s the cheapest form of transport past the pushbike … It makes bike travel possible for people who don’t have the levels of fitness or strength to ride a normal pushbike. It just seems absurd … when we are worrying about anything from peak oil to greenhouse gases to parking, to make these things illegal.”
BLIMEY!!
This rates with the stupidity of evaporating the water from Coal seam gas and electricity regulators stating that a business on a windy oastline wanting to power it with wind turbines cant because they are too big to be domestic and too small to be commercial.
Are there any other stupidities out there?