No more vignettes?

Velovignettes, that is...

Every cyclist in Switzerland is required to purchase a yearly velovignette, a sort of license for your bike. This license can (supposedly) be used to track down lost or stolen bicycles, but more importantly, it also gets you a couple million dollars' worth of personal liability insurance. The Swiss, being the most insured people in the world, love buying insurance, and at 5CHF/year, the velovignette isn't too much of a burden.

However, the vignette may soon be a thing of the past: 1/5 of the revenue vignettes generate goes to the administrative costs of the program, and 90% of people already have personal liability insurance. Also, using the stickers to track down missing bikes is a nice thought, but totally unrealistic.

As spring comes to Zurich and we start tuning our bicycles, we wait to see what will happen to the oh-so-Swiss vignette.