Dear Steve,

With all due respect, I think your logic is flawed. I've ridden extensively in China with my Shanghai plate, including through cities with bike bans. Just because a city bans bikes does not overrule your own responsibility (to yourself and your pillion as well as to the law and society) to be licensed, registered/plated and insured. The national traffic law requires that motor vehicles have licenses, though this gets dodgy at smaller displacements. If you take out a peasant in some rural place, and are not licensed and registered, national and provincial law are still in effect. Your insurance will be void and you stand an excellent chance in the current enforcement environment of being deported. Why on earth would you endorse taking this risk just because some cities have banned bikes? As Mr Spock would say, "illogical."

As for the magnitude of the risk of taking out a peasant in some rural place, you may have superhuman riding skills, but for us mere mortals, the chances of bad shit happening are actually quite high. And they rise exponentially in bad weather and darkness. Being a newb like clegg further boosts the chances of mayhem. Add a pillion as clegg will do, and they go even higher because of the pilot's compromised ability to control the bike.

Oh, one more thing: Would you consider ever riding unregistered or unlicensed or uninsured in your own home country? We foreigners are guests in this country, and have an obligation to obey local laws, even if they are hackneyed or haphazard or illogical. If you get arrested, burned or broken, or take someone else's life or cause injury while flaunting the law, there's blowback for all of us.

thanks for listening.
cheers