Setting a universal speed limit seems like a fools errand: In good conditions it will be frustratingly slow. In demanding circumstances too many will keep going at that limit anyways, perhaps more than if they had to actually gauge responsible speeds throughout the ride.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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Feel like a speed limit for the motor rather than the human would make sense. I would not mind a legal obligation for the motor to disengage (not brake) at certain speeds to classify as an e-bike.
Modding the e-bike should be fine (I'm afraid of anti-right of repair shenanigans) but if you remove the limit yourself suddenly you have a new category of vehicle.
That is already how it is set up in Europe.
Regular e-bikes have to have their electric assist limited to 25 km/h, but you can still pedal faster than that on your own power.
If an e-bike is not limited to 25 km/h, then it falls in the category of speed pedelec, which requires a licence plate and insurance.
However, it is trivially easy to illegally remove the limit on some models of e-bikes, and many people (mostly teenagers) do remove that limit. They then recklessly cycle at excessive speeds down the bike path, without regard of other cyclists who may be cycling there.
The issue in the Netherlands (idk about other place in Europe?) is lack of enforcement of the existing rules against tuning e-bikes.
and many people (mostly teenagers) do remove that limit.
And again I see this claim and have to ask: Do they? My counter claim is that the average person, even if we limit it to average teenage e-bike cyclist, is surprisingly afraid to mess with electronics.
While a lot of bikes are seized by the police for driving faster than allowed, they rarely give any indication if the bikes were modified in any way - partially because there is no legal definition for tuning. In my opinion, it is far more likely that the bikes were already illegally fast when the people bough them.
The most I have seen is a police estimation that 5-10% of e-bikes on the roads are illegally tuned.
The average person [..] is surprisingly afraid to mess with electronics
These e-bikes often don't require you to mess with electronics to "tune" them. It is usually as simple as flicking a switch in an app. Manufacturers know what they are doing and make the process as convenient as possible.
The most I have seen is a police estimation that 5-10% of e-bikes on the roads are illegally tuned.
That is 1 in 20 e-bikes on the road. Given the total amount of e-bikes on the road, those are insane numbers.
My comment didn't say "most people", it says "many people".
I saw a couple just the other day. It's not necessarily that they modify the bikes, it's more often the case that they order a Chinese bike or a scooter from some dropshipper. Un-capped bikes aren't hard to procure.
That is exactly my point.
Even the low end of that estimate is staggeringly high. 1 in 20 is an absolute distaster and total failure of oversight. 1 in 2000 is closer to acceptable.
All this because the government can't be assed to properly categorize, license, and enforce emotos, yea? Good grief, we manage to do that for every other class of vehicle... Guess the Dutch suddenly forgot they could just do that.
The Netherlands has been governed by a Neoliberal Rightwing cohalition for 2 decades now.
They're not the kind that will "get in the way of industry" for the common good, so obviously they're not going to regulate e-bikes.
The Dutch have chosen their bed and now they're getting to lie in it.
"Sir do you know why I pulled you over? Any idea how fast you were pedaling back there? How many white monsters have you had to drink today? Step outta the recumbent please sir. Imma have you walk in a straight line, if the line is too straight, you're going to gaol."
I hit 60kmh the other day, but I was going downhill. In retrospect, I was super unsafe about the whole thing.
I've heen casually riding at 16mph on single gear bikes since I was a teen.
Have the people deciding the speed limit ever riden a bike?
It's the Netherlands, so there's a good chance they have.
I'd be up for a 30 km/h speed limit, maybe even 25 km/h. 20 km/h seems very low though.
For regular bicycles speed limits don't make much sense in general. For streets that you don't want people to go fast you have to change the street.
Ebikes are capped at 25, going faster only happens downhill.
That limit can be removed. I believe that in some e-bikes you can just access a hidden mode and unlock it so it's not even a software or hardware modification.
Sure, it's not "legal", but if the Dutch Government refuses to regulate e-bikes nobody is going to be periodically checking them after they're sold to make sure they comply with rules like that.
The article doesn't mention the limit applies only to e-bikes, I would assume it's for everyone
I can comfortably peddle faster than that on my non-ebike.
I was gonna say that seems quite low. 15 might be more reasonable maybe?
I think it should a) be little higher and b) only be enforced for bikes with any kind of electric capability. Analog bikes have perfectly reasonable natural limits.
A colleague of mine sometimes does 60 on downhill parts of a road on a road bike without electricity. They are still alive and well, but sometimes natural limits are not enough 😅
The Netherlands is so flat 12mph is basically walking speed, that's so slow. I'd be pissed too. I think 20 is a good ace, since that's closer to a sweaty ride. I don't know much about ebikes though, Europe is already pretty restrictive on those aren't they?
I'll copy my comment on this article from a different thread
As a Dutchman, I’m not a fan of this proposed speed limit.
My natural speed at which I comfortably cycle is around 25 km/h, which is perfectly safe if you pay attention and slow down when it is necessary in order not to hinder your fellow road users. The issue is people who cycle recklessly without keeping other cyclists in mind, in my opinion.
Enforcement is the key. And we already have reckless road usage laws.
I much prefer the Belgian method, where they set a recommended speed limit with signs of 25 km/h on the bikepath. You can cycle faster, but that’s at your own risk.
You can cycle faster, but that’s at your own risk.
The whole reason to regulate those things is exactly because that's not "at your own risk" since you're sharing the road or bicycle path with other people.
As I see it, in your own space you can do whatever the fuck you want whilst risking only yourself (really, go wild!), but as soon as you're in a space shared with other people where your actions can harm others, then your freedom to do whatever the fuck you want is constrained because others too have various freedoms, not least to not get killed or seriously harmed by somebody else simply because they're using the same shared space.
In practice "indicative" is the same as non-existent.
Sure, thoughtfull people who take others into account will moderate their speed in more dangerous situations, but those people would already do it anyways even in the absence of an indicative maximum and, besides, even those with the best of intention can simply be wrong in their assumption that "this is a safe speed for these conditions" (funny statistic, not quite for cycling but appropriate: around 90% of drivers thing they're "good drivers" whilst thinking most other drivers are "bad drivers") and in a crash it's often not just them who suffer from their misjudgment. Meanwhile, selfish assholes will just carry on being selfish assholes in the face of a maximum speed indication or in fact in the face of a legal speed limit which isn't enforced and just go too fast in order to shave themselves a minute or two in their trip, since assholes only moderate their "what's best for me and fuck everybody else" when forced to (meaning that they MUST get punished if they don't).
20km/h is just too slow though. It turns transportation infrastructure that is quite useable on 20+ km journeys and turns it into infrastructure really only usable for short trips.
Also if you were to trying to get somewhere fast with a 20km/h speed limit that you abide by your effort would esentially be a lot of short sprints up to speed and a bunch of trundling in between, imo maybe the most annoying way to ride a bike.
I could see like 30km/h city and 40km/h country or something like this but 20 is just too low.
A 20km/h limit makes an average of ~ 20km/h impossible and i'd recon most long bike commutes find around a 20km/h average to be quite comfortable, but a 20km/h average even on flat terrain requires stints well past 20 to make up for lights and such. If it gets hilly this limit gets even more ridicoulous, depending on the grade the bike rolls way faster than 20.
I'm Dutch and I'm a proponent of bike lane speed limits, because I think it's a step towards fixing this idiotic categorization of scooters, fatbikes/bikes, snorfiets, moped. They are all misclassified and mopeds in particular should be considered closer to bicycles than motercycles. With speed limits, they can choose to go slow with the bikes, or fast with the cars.
All of these types should primarily be categorized by speed. We need a slow class for kids/elderly and a fast class for adults. That's it! Helmet, license, insurance for the fast class. In particular, close the loophole that if you have to pedal, it's a bike, so children can ride it without insurance or a helmet, it's insane. Needs more enforcement too
I'm on a colorful moped which draws attention (I'll never make that mistake again) and police stop me because I drive slowly on the cycle path for safety, instead of risking my life between tailgating cars that cannot overtake me on a single lane, but desperately try. But then three kids fly me by at 60kmh on one fatbike, no helmets, no care for anyone
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
I hope it's an electric moped, because having to breathe fumes from a 2 wheeler while biking is a fucking pain
It is. Battery sucks, though.
Wow, 20kmph is like easily achievable on a flat land. I usually did around 17-25kmph depend on where the wind blow, and i considered myself a slow cyclist.
Wow, 20, good thing it's so flat. Better hope you never get a tail wind. Fit children pass you on foot.
Pfft, 12 mph? Here in the Great State of Queensland, Australia we don't need trials of dangerous speeds like *checks conversion* 20 km/h. We just introduced World Leading™ road safety™ legislation restricting ebikes to 12 km/h on footpaths always, and on shared paths when overtaking pedestrians. No need for pinko rubbish like trials and "listening to public feedback". Just straight to implementing.
We wanted to put and end to dangerous behaviour like ever overtaking runners, and we certainly weren't going to let pesky technical details like there not being a legal distinction between footpaths and shared paths stop us.
Step up your game, Netherlands.
That's just to advertise normal bikes that are not speed limited 🤣
I do about 25kph average for a 100km ride I do on a stationary bike occasionally. It’s a sweaty 4 hours but if it was 20 min commute, I don’t think it would be difficult. I’m by no means a strong cyclist.
E-bikes and scooters are a menace though, without regulation. At the risk of sounding like John Forester - if they are moving at the speed of traffic perhaps they should move with traffic?
They made it harder forthe kids to have scooters so they moved to fatbikes.
Issue of their own creation.
Here we have 20km/h on e-scooters (and non-pedal stuff like hoover boards etc) and e-bikes 25km/h. - I think that works really good. Sure, I would like more than 20kmh on my e-scooter, but when walking I am sure glad they don't go faster when they pass me by.
15 seems more reasonable.