- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
As road deaths increase and cycle lanes overflow with e-bikes, the Netherlands is considering a cycling speed limit of 12mph (20km/h).
The government has started a two-week trial in Houten, near Utrecht, to gauge whether freedom-loving Dutch cyclists are willing to slow down – and whether they have any idea how fast they are going in the first place.
I’m also Dutch and I’m not against the idea of an advisory speed on the bike lanes (like they do in Belgium), but I think a hard speed limit at 20 km/h is too low and restrictive.
A lot of cyclists (including myself) naturally cycle at a speed faster than that, and are most comfortable cycling at that speed. This limit would also apply to them, not just the mopeds and e-bikes. That reduces cycling comfort, which I don’t think you should be doing if you want to encourage people to take the bike.
By all means tackle the problem of speeding mopeds and e-bikes. But don’t penalise the regular cyclist who cycles fast, but pays attention to their fellow cyclist and slows down when the situation calls for it.
20 is a bit too low, I agree. You could also let enforcement discretion cover the gap. Unless and until we have cyclist speed cameras, there’s probably no problem in practice
I don’t like the idea that we should be implementing sub-optimal laws with the assumption that they won’t be properly enforced anyway. Then it will be the same as all those other laws we already don’t sufficiently enforce, such as reckless road usage.
If we are going to implement a hard speed limit we should enforce that speed limit, and not just leave it at the discretion of the police officer to determine whether they feel like it is something that should be enforced or not.
Edit: That is why I argue in favour of an advisory speed, rather than a hard speed limit.
Let me tell you that as a Portuguese (who also lived in The Netherlands en kan selfs nederlands spreken) and am thus intimatelly familiar with an environment were a lot of the rules of the road are de facto “indicative” (either because they’re vague or because they’re not properly enforced with stiff punishment for non-compliance), that the result is a fucked up environment with more deaths (just check Portugal’s road mortality rates, the worst or near worst in Europe).
Don’t properly regulate or sternely enforce the rules (the second being the main problem in Portugal) and the result is all the assholes regularly doing asshole shit that sooner or later ends up harming and even killing other people, either directly or indirectly.
Personally I much preferred the way of doing things I saw in The Netherlands and Germany.
Average biking speed is between 15 and 20. Fast cyclists are the exception. There will always be people complaining the speed limit is too low, or that they were only slightly over. I think 25 should be fine