Every now and again, a debate about cycling erupts on British morning television, and within seconds someone reaches for the same tired line: if cyclists want to share the roads with everyone else, they should have to pay road tax, buy insurance and fix a number plate to their bike. It sounds reasonable, fair-minded, even obvious. It is also, as the latest baffling Good Morning Britain exchange reminds us, a myth that refuses to die. During a segment that has been widely shared since it aired, the show’s hosts made a confident comparison with the Netherlands, the country that British politicians so often cite as proof that a cycling revolution is possible. Dutch cyclists, the presenters insisted, are required to have licence plates. They are required to carry insurance. That is how the Dutch manage to keep cyclists in check. They repeated the claim with the certainty of people who have never had to check it. And then, minutes later, Chris Boardman – former Olympic champion, Greater Manchester’s walking and cycling commissioner, and a man who has spent more time thinking about Dutch street design than almost anyone on television – calmly corrected them. No, he said. They don’t. He did it without fuss, without making them look stupid, and without giving the myth another inch of ground. It was a quiet but remarkable piece of television: a tiny collision between a popular misconception and the simple truth. For anyone who cycles, the exchange will have felt painfully familiar. It is the same conversation people have in pubs, kitchens, radio phone-ins and Twitter arguments all the time. If you ride a bike, you have almost certainly had someone explain to you, with complete sincerity, that Dutch cyclists are heavily regulated, and that Britain should copy Holland by registering every bike, taxing every rider and forcing them all to carry insurance. The trouble is that it simply is not true. The Netherlands, the country everyone thinks they know, does not require bicycles to have licence plates. It does not require cyclists to hold special insurance. It does not have a great national bike database to trace every rider. What it has is a century of clever planning, safe junctions, separated cycle tracks, lower vehicle speeds and a culture that treats cycling as an ordinary way to move around, not as a rebellious act. But you would never know that from watching the Good Morning Britain presenters, who were so convinced they had found the secret to Dutch success that they almost missed the real one sitting across from them.
The exact context of the Good Morning Britain segment matters less than what happened inside it. The hosts were not maliciously anti-cycling. They seemed genuinely to believe what they were saying, and they said it more than once. Perhaps they had heard the claim somewhere before – a newspaper column, a radio debate, an argument with a neighbour – and it had lodged in their minds as a fact. That is how myths work: they do not need evidence, only repetition. At some point the conversation turned to the Netherlands, and the presenters dusted off the familiar story. Over there, they suggested, cyclists have number plates and insurance, and that is why everybody behaves. It was a neat little moral tale: rights come with responsibilities, and the Dutch understand this. But Chris Boardman, who was appearing on the show as a guest, was not prepared to let it slide. He gently but firmly explained that the Dutch do no such thing. There is no obligation for a Dutch cyclist to put a number plate on their bike. There is no compulsory insurance tied to riding a bicycle. You can buy an inexpensive liability policy to protect yourself if you accidentally damage someone else’s property, but that is a household insurance product, not a special cycling licence. And the Dutch certainly do not run a national system of bicycle plates as a way of holding cyclists to account. You could see the discomfort on the presenters’ faces. It was one of those live television moments where the world shifts slightly, and everyone in the studio suddenly realises that the confident claim was nonsense. Boardman did not gloat. He simply told the truth, calmly, and let it settle. The fact that the claim was not just wrong but “repeatedly and wrongly” made – as the road.cc headline put it – was precisely what made the clip so telling. It was not a one-off slip. It was an entrenched belief, stubbornly held, that collapsed only when confronted by somebody who actually knew what he was talking about. That is the human reality of these discussions: most people are not lying, they are merely repeating what they have always assumed to be true.
So why does this myth have such a grip on the British imagination? The answer is tied up with the way we talk about roads and responsibility. For decades, British cycling has been framed as a marginal, slightly dangerous activity that ordinary people must be protected from. The car, by contrast, is treated as the default way to get around. In that worldview, anyone who chooses to cycle owes the rest of society something. They should pay tax, pass a test, have their bicycle registered and prove they are responsible enough to use public roads. The Dutch example is used as a threat, not an inspiration: you cannot have nice bike lanes unless you first accept the discipline of plates and premiums. But the real Dutch example points in the opposite direction. The Netherlands did not build its cycling culture on paperwork. It built it on infrastructure and urban design. It built it on separated cycle paths, low-speed residential streets, coherent routes that take people where they need to go, and a legal environment that protects more vulnerable road users. Dutch children ride to school not because they carry identity documents, but because the route is safe enough for their parents to let them go. Dutch adults ride to work not because they fear a fine, but because cycling is the most convenient, pleasant and efficient way to travel. None of that depends on registration plates. None of that depends on mandatory insurance. And none of it can be copied by making Britain’s cyclists carry extra paperwork. The myth is persistent because it offers a simple, punitive solution to a complex problem. It says that the road is a dangerous place because certain people are reckless, and if we identify them with plates, they will be forced to behave. It is a seductive story, especially for drivers who feel they are carrying the burden of tax and insurance while cyclists breezily slip through red lights. But it mistakes the nature of road danger. The real damage on our roads is done by motor vehicles, driven at speed, in environments that encourage speed and penalise no one. A cyclist can be careless, even a nuisance, but a bicycle is not a lethal weapon in the way a car is. Asking cyclists to insure and register themselves is a bit like asking pedestrians to carry number plates in case they bump into someone on the pavement. It would be bureaucracy for its own sake, and it would not save a single life.
There is a deeper emotional reason why the plate-and-insurance demand keeps resurfacing. It is a way of saying that cycling is not a normal way to travel; you must prove yourself special and answerable before you are allowed to participate. It also treats every cyclist as a potential offender. The person on the bike, in this telling, is someone who has avoided the responsibilities of motorists and must be brought into line. The fact that the Netherlands – the very country held up as the promised land – has no such system is inconvenient to that narrative, so the narrative simply rewrites the Dutch example to suit itself. This is why Chris Boardman’s correction was so important. He did not have to build a huge case or produce reams of statistics. He just had to say, gently, that the premise was wrong. But in doing so, he exposed something uncomfortable: if the argument for cycle licences and insurance is based on a false picture of the Netherlands, then what does it stand on? It stands on nothing except suspicion of people who ride bikes. It stands on the weary assumption that roads belong to motor traffic and everybody else is an interloper. That assumption has real consequences. It shapes policy, funding and the way new street designs are debated. It ensures that when someone is killed while cycling, the immediate question is whether they were wearing a helmet or obeying every rule, rather than whether the junction was dangerous. It makes cycle lanes a political controversy rather than a piece of public health infrastructure. It turns a practical, life-saving change into a culture-war argument. And it distracts us from the obvious fact that the Dutch do not spend their time arguing about whether cyclists should have plates. They spend their time ensuring that the safest way to get around is also the easiest and most ordinary way to get around.
Chris Boardman is the right person to puncture this myth, not just because of his sporting pedigree, but because of what he has done since he stopped racing. He has spent years working on the gritty, unglamorous details of active travel: where the paint is flaking, why the bus stop is in the wrong place, how a low-traffic neighbourhood changes a child’s route to school. He knows the Netherlands not as a tourist or an anecdote, but as a professional planner who has studied the systems that make cycling work. When he corrected the Good Morning Britain hosts, he did so with the weary patience of someone who has answered the same question many times. He did not appear angry or dismissive. He did not lecture. He simply refused to accept a falsehood, even when it was convenient, even when it was being used as an argument against him. That is what expertise looks like on live television: not shouting, not bullying, but quietly insisting on the facts. The contrast between the hosts’ confidence and Boardman’s certainty was striking. They had a soundbite; he had a lifetime of study and practice. They had the authority of the studio; he had the authority of someone who has actually tried to build better streets and seen what works. In the end, the exchange became a small parable about the difference between repeating an opinion and knowing a subject. It also made clear why road safety campaigners getting frustrated when the same nonsense resurfaces. It is not because they are precious or pedantic. It is because every minute spent debunking false claims about Dutch number plates is a minute not spent fixing the dangerous junction or designing the safe route. And there are a lot of dangerous junctions to fix.
In the end, the real lesson of this strange little television moment is not about Dutch bureaucracy at all. It is about the stories we tell ourselves to avoid change. The Netherlands is a genuinely impressive cycling nation, but it did not become that way by demanding more from cyclists. It became that way by making cycling safer and more pleasant than driving for short trips. It became that way by giving people space, not by taking away their freedom. If Britain truly wanted to be more like the Netherlands, the prescription would be straightforward: build protected cycle tracks, connect them into networks, slow down traffic in towns and cities, make the streets feel safe for children and older people, and treat cycling as ordinary transport rather than a political identity. There is no need for a licence plate. There is no need for a special insurance certificate. There is no need for a registration scheme that would cost millions, punish the poorest people, discourage casual riders and add nothing to safety. What is needed is the courage to redesign roads around people, not just vehicles. The next time someone says, “But the Dutch have plates and insurance, don’t they?”, the answer is a simple, human, slightly exhausted no. It is the answer Chris Boardman gave on Good Morning Britain. It is the answer every cyclist has given at dinner tables for years. And until the myth is finally laid to rest, the most radical thing any of us can do is say it again, kindly but firmly, every time we hear it. The Dutch do not need number plates on their bicycles. That does not make their system less responsible; it makes it more humane. And that is an idea we would do well to copy.