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By contrast, unsafe cyclists are mostly a threat to themselves.

Licensing cyclists would not make it any easier for police to catch those who disregard road rules. That would require licensing of bicycles as well. The licence itself would have to be rather large and visible for it to be of any value. Our police are already stretched to the limit with the work volume they have. It’s difficult to imagine that chasing cyclists would ever be a big priority.

The city studied bicycled licensing at the time of amalgamation, and again in 2012, and each time concluded that it would be a net cost, not a new source of revenue. The city’s most recent estimate said that running a new bicycle bureaucracy would cost $100,000 a year but licences would bring in only $40,000.

Any bicycle licensing bylaw would seem likely to fail the test of having a clear objective and the likelihood of achieving it. No doubt that is the reason why no major Canadian city licenses bicycles. Regina was the only one to do so, but it scrapped the law last year because it was widely ignored by both cyclists and police.

Perhaps the most important argument against bicycle licensing is that it is likely to decrease cycling. Why create a new administrative barrier to an activity we actually want to encourage?

Cycling is one of those increasingly rare activities where government assumes that we will use our heads, despite an element of danger. Even helmets are not mandatory for adults.

With that freedom does comes the responsibility to follow the rules of the road, for the good of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.

That common sense can’t be legislated.