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I support it for lanes with a mixture of walking and biking (which at least in Norway is almost all the bike lanes). There is a huge difference in outcome in co
by dagss 8y ago
I support it for lanes with a mixture of walking and biking (which at least in Norway is almost all the bike lanes). There is a huge difference in outcome in colliding with pedestrians in 25 km/h vs 30 km/h. Non-e-bikers that hit 30 km/h necessarily have a certain amount of training to keep those speeds consistently, while e-bikes give people on their first bike trip the same speed.
- avar 8y agoWell it's a good thing that your disagreement with me isn't going to translate into any votes on the matter, since Norway just adopts EU policy, and doesn't vote on it :) More seriously, I can see that point, you can come up with good reasons either way. But I think the actual reason is just arbitrary. I'm not aware of any trial program where they tried different speeds, tried to gather statistics on safety etc. This 25 km/h number was just arbitrarily chosen by some bureaucrat, likewise for 20 mph. Whether something is an overall win for safety is a much more complex question than about the physics of colliding with a pedestrian at either 25 km/h or 30 km/h. If it was 30 perhaps you'd get more people to ride bikes, and then you'd be in the worst case colliding with a cyclist instead of that same person going 50-80 km/h in a car.
- u801e 8y agoPedestrians don't have mirrors to see what's going in behind them. They don't typically stay to one side (especially when walking in groups), and they don't signal their intention to change direction. All of these make riding at higher speeds impracticable when among pedestrians. Not being able to ride at higher speeds makes (e-)bikes less useful from a transportation point of view.