No front number plates for Aussie bikes!

[Viking]

Morning all,

Good news for some of us - no more threat of front number plates.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 01,00.html

A NATIONAL police commissioners' plan to force motorcyclists to wear front number plates has been dumped after 10 years' study, at a direct cost of almost $500,000 and millions more lost in government revenues.

The tone of the article is pretty anti-motorcycle (ie, we're all a bunch of hoons who speed because we can, and flaunt the law), but the outcome is welcome.

Mind you, the (alleged) lost revenue of $2M per year is a tiny drop in the bucket of how much is collected from speeding each year (in the vicinity of $100M in Victoria alone), nor do they mention how many cars have missing / unreadable license plates and their associated "lost revenue".

[Falcopops]

[Dalemac]

Wow. Democracy works in Australia.

All i need now is some money in the bank, and a job over there!

[scorpio24v]

front plates were removed from `bikes in the early seventies in the old country due to them being a source of danger to pedestrians if involved in a colision. So we all took our front plates of. They also made us wear helmets at areound the same time

Our government would be hard pressed to make us put em back on as it would contradict their original argument, hoisted by their own petard?

[HowardQ]

The government were put in a position where we were forced to take them off new bikes, as all standard plates were steel plates, mounted on top of sturdy steel mudgards, so could possibly slice up a pedestrian in an accident. The irony at the time was if you had gone down the race rep road like me, you fitted clip ons and shorter lightweight alloy guards etc., and certainly did not want the numberplate there. You made up some sort of a bracket and stuck it just below the headlight facing forwards. Some people fitted flyscreens and fitted stick on plates to these again facing forward.
The government, went for getting rid of plates all together, rather than suggest something that "rebel bikers" had chosen to do themselves.
Very nice of them and we were happy to oblige at the time, for safety reasons of course!
Then again black number plates on bikes with smaller than current silver or white characters were never that easy for a roadside copy to read. With a bit of practice, your pillion could move his legs and cover the rear plate with his feet if you passed a parked up cop on his Ariel Leader. The Leader, didn't have much more chance than the Moggy Thou Panda cars of catching you on a 650 Brit Twin, so off you went.

[MartDude]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 01,00.html

Who's the grumpy-looking cane toad in the pic next to the article?

[D-Rider]

Yes - I've still got my CB175's front numberplate screwed to my garage door.
My son's CB125 has bolts through the holes in the front mudguard where its front numberplate used to be mounted.

Helmets became compulsory a bit before we could remove the front number plates.

[Viking]

Who's the grumpy-looking cane toad in the pic next to the article?

NFI. I block any and all Flash so I get to miss all those "wonderful" extras that are splattered all over webpages these days.