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Amsterdam: Speed limit will be 30 km/h on most roads from today
(www.amsterdam.nl)
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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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That sounds like a big mistake. I can understand like, 48 km/h per hour in highly populated areas, but going below US school speed limits is going to create lots of offenders (maybe that's the end game). I can ride faster that 30 km/h on my bike. I can continually do that with as little as a 5% decline from the horizontal axis.
Loudly and visibly changing the rules doesn't "create offenders". Offenders aren't victims of changed rules.
It has been shown time and again that lowering speed limits in cities reduces traffic accidents and emissions at close to no costs to the flow of traffic.
My own city (in Germany, so it really was a heavily-criticized decision) lowered the speed limit on one of the major arterial roads to 30 kph. It is one I have to use regularly, and oh boy, let me tell you: I was soooo opposed to the change. Yet, it really only changed how fast you arrive at the next red light. There is literally no discernable change in how long it takes to pass that street, especially during rush hour. Traffic just got a little more fluid.
It is, however, the street with the most speeding tickets in town. I regularly see one or two mobile speed cameras along the way. And I've never been fined. You got to wonder...
I'd say they are, if the rules are shit. In this case though the rules are fine imo.
I mean even if this speed limit was shit, it's not like speed limits in general are invisible and people don't know what happens if you break them. Every offense in this case is self-inflicted and not caused by the limit itself.
Actually, I have...
You're right, now that you mention it
Is it still built like a 50km/h street? If yes then there you have your answer.
What's your argument?
Streets in Europe are (with few exceptions) narrower than in the US. Is there a natural consequence for speed limits? Does it take some kind of special mental capacity to follow legal speed limits in streets that perceivably could be traversed faster?
In fact yes it does you practically need to be a superhuman: Narrow streets feel unsafe and drivers automatically slow down. In the US speed limits, where they don't build streets according to the intended speed but much wider, are set to lower than what the engineers want you to drive at because they expect speeding.
US speed limits are also inconsistent, and the signs announcing them are practically invisible. Have a video.
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Typical walking speed is about 2.5 to 3 MPH suppose your government legislated a universal walking speed limit of 1.5 MPH. I think you can easily see that ridiculous laws create offenders, and the offenders are the victim of bad laws.
Bad faith argument much?
And now back to the real world...
Wait school zone speed limits in the US is higher than 30km/h ?
In my country school zone speed limit is usually 20km/h and there are tons of residential areas as well as more and more cities that restricts big portion of their roads to 30km/h.
This is mostly done to reduce noise pollution as well as mortal accidents.
Remember the american mentality:
As soon as children are born, they don't matter any more.
School zones are 40km/h in my country.
Most school zones in the US are 20mph (32km/h). Some states will have 25mph and, for example, a highway going through a school zone that usually 65mph may go to 35-50mph when the school zone is active but this is an exception, not the rule and is done on a case by case basis.
Remember though, American roads are much larger tha European roads. Most of these school zones that go that slow there's really no need for it.
What. Aren't those supposed to be grade-separated and have no pedestrians.
Sometimes they are. Other times it's Main St. straight through the middle of town. And others it's through the middle of nowhere and peoples driveways straight onto it.
I've also seen dirt highways which just means it was an old highway from hundreds of years ago and just never got paved.
It's 20mph which is 32kmh
Also you are only allowed to drive as fast as to not endanger others. Children are not reliable and predictable. In front of a school during school hours driving at the speed limit is still reckless.
Cars shouldn't be allowed around schools at all.
Parents need a way to drop off and pick up their kids, especially if it is a time other than school hours- the kid is sick, has a doctor's appointment, etc.
Not in most of europe, where kids can usually go to school by themselves, either by walking, biking or public transport. It's all about city planning.
Helicopter parents driving their children to and from school are a big nuisance and safety concern here.
If your child is very sick, walking, biking or public transport would not be the best way to get them out of a school.
There have to be excemptions for those very rare cases of course. Just like there are for fire trucks in case the school building is on fire.
But if children are too sick to walk, an ambulace might be a better solution perhaps?
Are you seriously suggesting that it is worth wasting an ambulance and a team of EMTs' time when the problem could easily solved by the parent picking up the child and taking them to the doctor?
It seems I have to repeat myself here: There have to be excemptions for those very rare cases of course.
Thankfully Amsterdam isn't the first city to do this and most of it is also limited to 30 kph anyway, so we actually this will work out fine.
5% is pretty steep, I wouldn't be surprised if one could reach 30 kph without pedaling at all.
found the dutch person
Technically you can reach that with any amount of drop per distance where the speed gain exceeds drag as long as you don't specify how long the incline is.
That's the question.
I shaved my body and only cycle naked to achieve minimum drag
Just so I can crash into kids faster on an incline
Amsterdam isn't the kind of place where you'd be doing 30km/h. In car or on bike.
Amsterdam is one big highly populated area. See point 1.
If you do try going over 30km/h in Amsterdam, you're frankly a danger to yourself in most places on bike and a danger to pretty much everyone else when you're in a car.
Also 30km/h with a 9kg bike isn't 30km/h with a 1600kg toyota when you hit someone
If you want to go fast go around the city
Many major European cities already implemented this, and I've yet to hear of a single one where it turned out to be "a big mistake". Can anybody from these cities report (e. g. Helsinki or others)?
Madrid did this. Massive fail, basically no one was going 30km/h, if you did (which I used to, just to fuck around) you could expect lots of honking and comments about your mother. It was reverted shortly after
That's not a failure of the law, it's a failure of law enforcement
You obviously never been to Amsterdam
That's not really relevant in Europe.
30 km/h is somewhere around the point where pedestrians can walk away from a collision with a car. Not unharmed but likely without broken bones.
Yes you can bike faster, but a bike has much less mass so they're less dangerous for pedestrians in collisions.
The limit before was 50km/h. The city is just too crowded. By lowering the speed limit even more you force people to take the highways if they want to reach the other side of the city.
Actually there's so much road crossing from people and bikes in Amsterdam that cars kind of already go to 30km/h in most streets