UK Green Party Wants to Limit Speed, Noise of Motorcycles

The party would work to get riders of large-capacity bikes to switch to scooters and mopeds by "setting and enforcing strict noise limits and, for higher powered machines, speed limiters."

Even allowing for motorcycles being kinder to the environment than cars, the Greenies want to discourage people from getting motorcycles at all, in fact, "because they emit pollution and noise and can endanger road users." To help keep other road users even more safe from the two-wheeled menace, it would ban motorbikes from any of the "priority measures put in for pedestrians and cyclists, including those shared with public transport," like bus lanes.

Those provisions are included in three paragraphs of what is a lengthy policy outline that covers every mode of transportation. Cars take their lumps, the Greens aiming to prohibit cars that can "travel at greater speeds than the majority of EU national maximum speed level." SUVs "are quite unnecessary... and their purchase and use should be discouraged." Freight transport gets a wallop, too, with the aim of reducing cargo shipments through "the implementation of policies to alter the current culture of over consumption."

The Greens have one representative in the UK parliament right now, their leader, Natalie Bennett. With these kinds of plans - until polar bears start walking ashore in Orkney - we would be surprised if they get anyone else elected.