Can I or can’t I ride on the road? The question is just too taxing….

“Get out of the way!!”…. “You cyclists think you own the road!”….

“#bloodycyclists”

Yes, I’m sure we’ve all heard those particular “phrases” now and again. And they are usually followed by the old classic “and you shouldn’t be on the roads – you don’t even pay road tax!”

And for quite some time, a lot of motorists believed their “comments” to be gospel. They paid road tax and we did not, therefore they had the right to command the asphalt.

But did you know that road tax was actually abolished in 1937? Well it was and today none of the millions of motorists in Britain pay a “road” tax; they pay a Vehicle Excise Duty.

The Vehicle Excise Duty is actually a tax on the car and not on the road and the profits from this tax, as usual, go straight to the Treasury. In fact, these days many of the relevant government departments are referring to the VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) rather than a “road tax”.

Even the DVLA is referring to the tax as VED after they received quite a “telling off” for an advert they commissioned that called for people to pay their road tax. The RAC’s director Stephen Glaister was quoted on the BBC recently saying ” Road tax implies you are being taxed to use the roads and the money goes back into the roads – that’s not correct”.

So the next time you are cycling along, maybe on your way to work or just out for a ride and the all to familiar “angry driver” rears his or her “vein-bulging” head out of the window to scream at you, fear not – you now know that you have as much right to be there as they have.

As my old English teacher used to say, “You won’t get anywhere by shouting……..”