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Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by tcp_handshaker on Thursday September 03, 2026 @06:58AM (#49548433)
Its ironic, because the biggest danger in Amsterdam are cyclists doing well over 60 inside town narrow streets.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by sigilis on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:07AM (#49548498)
In my experience, cyclists travel from 15-25 in the city. Very rare to find someone going 60. Even motorcycles don’t usually go that fast. There’s a lot of people on the streets of Amsterdam.

The biggest danger here is not terribly clear. Somewhere in the intersection of people cluelessly walking into the bike lane and bicyclists hitting the clueless.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by root-parent on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:36AM (#49548702)
>> Somewhere in the intersection of people cluelessly walking into the bike lane and bicyclists hitting the clueless.

Looks like bicyclists are the clueless...bordering on criminal:

https://youtu.be/u10OCGJH0Lg?t=3

https://youtu.be/P0bZFkPtu4M?t=3

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by kzrdude on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:05AM (#49548489)
You probably mean over 30-40 km/h, not 60.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by tcp_handshaker on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:23AM (#49548614)
No I mean up to 60... km/h

https://youtu.be/aEHIqqaPIqI

And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

https://youtu.be/FdoViT8-s5I?t=47

you get hit by one of these silent missiles, with an 80kg passenger on it, you spend weeks in hospital...you are older person, its life threatening...

Amsterdam bikes are terrifying :-))

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by yread on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:50AM (#49548784)
WTF how does she measure 36km/h on the leisurely cycling people? And how does she measure the 28km/h guy when being so far from the direction he's travelling?
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by Mawr on Thursday September 03, 2026 @10:14AM (#49550198)
It's probably a device meant for and tested to measure cars, not arbitrary objects. Probably needs to be used in a specific way too.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by piva00 on Thursday September 03, 2026 @08:21AM (#49549049)
> And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

These bikes are not going at 36 km/h, whatever device she is using to measure it is incorrectly calibrated or simply not made to measure people on bikes.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by tasuki on Thursday September 03, 2026 @09:35AM (#49549755)
> No I mean up to 60... km/h

That's not a bicycle, that's a motorbike.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by Mawr on Thursday September 03, 2026 @10:17AM (#49550237)
> No I mean up to 60... km/h

"Cyclist" and "someone on an illegal e-bike" are not one and the same thing.

> And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

No, those people freewheeling on a regular city bike on relatively flat ground are not doing 36 km/h. That's around 20 km/h by my somewhat well tuned eyeballs. Have you never been on a bike and measured your speed?

You're not going to be seeing cyclists going 36 km/h beyond significant downhills or sporty people on drop bar bikes putting in significant effort.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by Hikikomori on Friday September 04, 2026 @03:40AM (#49561705)
36 on people rolling by not even pedaling? Yeah that thing isn't correct.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by boesboes on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:19AM (#49548579)
more like 15-20 km/h
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by mmustapic on Thursday September 03, 2026 @07:05AM (#49548484)
It’s not ironic. Once you remove the biggest danger (fast cars), fast bikes take the top spot.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by orwin on Thursday September 03, 2026 @08:55AM (#49549358)
Going 60 you need to have a _really_ good bike and want to go that fast. I barely manage to keep 30 for more than 20 minutes, and I would consider myself an average cyclist on an above average bike.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by ndsipa_pomu on Thursday September 03, 2026 @01:34PM (#49553672)
You'd need a good bike and also be an elite cyclist/sprinter. I can usually manage 30kmh for an hour or so (providing there's a good tailwind and I'm going downhill), but the issue with going faster is the air resistance which is roughly proportional to the square of velocity (rolling resistance is roughly proportional to velocity so that becomes less important). Going twice as fast will mean quadrupling your power output.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by isthatafact on Monday September 07, 2026 @09:07PM (#49604580)
Almost -- power is equal to force multiplied by velocity, so double the speed is 8x the power considering only air resistance.
Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by piva00 on Thursday September 03, 2026 @09:15AM (#49549552)
A cyclist that can do sustained 60km/h in narrow streets is an elite athlete.

Have you tried biking at 60km/h? Even on a very good bike with a gigantic gear ratio I don't think you'd manage to get close to it on flat ground.

Quick edit: just to give you some figures, if the bike + cyclist weighs in total about 80kg the cyclist needs to sustain an output of about 1000W (on an aggressive position down on the drops) without wind to ride at 60km/h on flat ground. Very few people on Earth can do that...

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by yourusername on Thursday September 03, 2026 @10:55AM (#49550781)
>A cyclist that can do sustained 60km/h in narrow streets is an elite athlete.

Most "cyclists" are now actually drivers of light electric motorcycles. A $1500 Chinese ebike will do that easily.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by piva00 on Thursday September 03, 2026 @03:33PM (#49555470)
It will do for about 15 minutes until the battery complete discharges.

Riding at 60km/h on a bike consumes a lot of power, aerodynamics are a bitch of a force.

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by tasuki on Thursday September 03, 2026 @09:33AM (#49549726)
> cyclists doing well over 60 inside town narrow streets

I used to cycle and I don't think I could achieve 60 on flat ground like Amsterdam. That's very solid sprinting that even the best cyclists in the world can only achieve for short periods of time. On narrow Amsterdam streets with cobblestone? Impossible...

Re:Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city str... by mcv on Thursday September 03, 2026 @12:26PM (#49552666)
I'm fast. I've been clocked at over 40. 40 is crazy fast. Most cyclist go 15. The fast ones 20-25. The very fastest maybe 30-35. 60 is a wild exaggeration. That's what sprinters do in the Tour de France.