Bikes/Scooters are not cars, they’re not insured, they’re not licensed. Children can and regularly do use them.
Now if you want to talk about properly ticketing, charging, and impounding cars/drivers breaking the rules, that’s a different conversation. But an ebike or scooter going 120km/h isn’t the same as a car doing 120km/h on a highway.
It’s more an objection to the typical “personal freedom” argument you get from car drivers who balk at the idea of speed limiters. There is no road in North America with a speed limit of 160kph, so a hard limit of that value is meaningless. I’d be open to a dynamic speed limiter that was context-aware though: we already see that cars have the capability of knowing the current speed limit and chiming to let the driver know they’re busting the limit. There’s no reason why the limit shouldn’t be enforced there in the same way that e-bikes have a fixed limit… even when they’re forced to share a road with cars that do not obey the limit.
I accept your argument that bikes aren’t insured or licensed, and that this can be used as an excuse to limit their capabilities, but as one of the law-abiding e-bike riders who’s been tailgated, close-passed and nearly run off the road by more than a few angry drivers, I can assure you that e-bikes are not the problem when it comes to safety. 2-tonnes of steel and glass being driven by (licensed, insured) absolute maniacs is the real threat.
I think some form of limit aware speed chime or warning is required on new cars sold in the EU. Having driven a few, I would not want to trust that technology to slow the car down.
Many times I have had a car’s camera pick up a speed limit sign from a neighbouring road to the highway and indicate that I was suddenly going 60 km/h over the new speed limit. Same thing if GPS tracking or map data isn’t perfect on cars that use that instead.
Well if technology can’t be trusted to keep two tonnes of steel and glass from moving at unsafe speeds, the obvious response must be to ban such vehicles from areas where they might be used to kill people.
cars cause way more deaths, i’m all for limiting them to 30 km/hr. And even if scooters cause deaths its mostly the idiot riding them, with cars, the drivers murder other people … all the time.
So what’s your plan to redesign every single city in the country? Are you going to build out high speed rail?
It’s a dumb take because it doesn’t account for the myriad of things that would need to be intrinsically altered to accomplish your goal of 30km/h cars.
I don’t argue people kill tons of people with cars every year, I will argue about what your plan is outside of slow down cars. We’d be looking at least at hundreds of billions to rebuild everything, likely more.
If it would be up to me, I’d force everyone to get a special driving license for cars going upwards this limit.
If bigger transport requires a special license and an expertise in driving them, so should speedy cars. And it should be harder to pass since it is more dangerous to drive over this limit.
But we also wouldn’t want it to be much lower since passing on 2-lane roads is generally safer at faster speeds, so putting a, say, 120 km/h speed limit on cars might be less safe than no limits.
“Crazy fast” is contextual to be honest. Going 100 mph in a school zone is crazy fast. Going 100 mph on the unlimited sections of the German autobahn is pretty tame.
This is also been the traditional challenge with speed limiters - You can’t set a single universal “safe” speed. That said, with GPS and traffic sign recognition, we can now use dynamic limiters to adjust to match the speed limit imposed where the vehicle is currently driving.
Having been on the autobahn in a shitbox Renault econobox rental, 100mph is plenty fast. In North America (especially the rust belt) with how shitty the vehicle safety inspection standards are, I honestly don’t trust the people around me to have maintained their car to an adequate standard to be safe driving at 100mph. Don’t even get me started on how shitty people’s driving skills tend to be.
A car is already a lethal projectile at 60mph. I don’t like the idea of increasing the lethality potential for the average highway driving mistake.
That said, with GPS and traffic sign recognition, we can now use dynamic limiters to adjust to match the speed limit imposed where the vehicle is currently driving.
In theory. In practice the car picks up signs from the slip road or GPS location for the parallel local road or doesn’t know what the “in caso di nebbia” text under the 50km/h sign on the motorway means.
I’d be more upset about this if cars were also fitted with speed limiters.
Cars are fitted with speed limiters and have been for a long time. 160km/h - 165km/h is typical for cars to stop accelerating at.
Sorry, I meant reasonable speed limiters. If the bike is capped at 32kph, so should the cars. We’re talking about safety, right?
That…is a pretty dumb take.
Bikes/Scooters are not cars, they’re not insured, they’re not licensed. Children can and regularly do use them.
Now if you want to talk about properly ticketing, charging, and impounding cars/drivers breaking the rules, that’s a different conversation. But an ebike or scooter going 120km/h isn’t the same as a car doing 120km/h on a highway.
It’s more an objection to the typical “personal freedom” argument you get from car drivers who balk at the idea of speed limiters. There is no road in North America with a speed limit of 160kph, so a hard limit of that value is meaningless. I’d be open to a dynamic speed limiter that was context-aware though: we already see that cars have the capability of knowing the current speed limit and chiming to let the driver know they’re busting the limit. There’s no reason why the limit shouldn’t be enforced there in the same way that e-bikes have a fixed limit… even when they’re forced to share a road with cars that do not obey the limit.
I accept your argument that bikes aren’t insured or licensed, and that this can be used as an excuse to limit their capabilities, but as one of the law-abiding e-bike riders who’s been tailgated, close-passed and nearly run off the road by more than a few angry drivers, I can assure you that e-bikes are not the problem when it comes to safety. 2-tonnes of steel and glass being driven by (licensed, insured) absolute maniacs is the real threat.
I think some form of limit aware speed chime or warning is required on new cars sold in the EU. Having driven a few, I would not want to trust that technology to slow the car down.
Many times I have had a car’s camera pick up a speed limit sign from a neighbouring road to the highway and indicate that I was suddenly going 60 km/h over the new speed limit. Same thing if GPS tracking or map data isn’t perfect on cars that use that instead.
Well if technology can’t be trusted to keep two tonnes of steel and glass from moving at unsafe speeds, the obvious response must be to ban such vehicles from areas where they might be used to kill people.
i don’t agree
cars cause way more deaths, i’m all for limiting them to 30 km/hr. And even if scooters cause deaths its mostly the idiot riding them, with cars, the drivers murder other people … all the time.
So what’s your plan to redesign every single city in the country? Are you going to build out high speed rail?
It’s a dumb take because it doesn’t account for the myriad of things that would need to be intrinsically altered to accomplish your goal of 30km/h cars.
I don’t argue people kill tons of people with cars every year, I will argue about what your plan is outside of slow down cars. We’d be looking at least at hundreds of billions to rebuild everything, likely more.
? I’ve definitely exceeded that in cars and pickup trucks
If it would be up to me, I’d force everyone to get a special driving license for cars going upwards this limit.
If bigger transport requires a special license and an expertise in driving them, so should speedy cars. And it should be harder to pass since it is more dangerous to drive over this limit.
nope.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/2-drivers-caught-going-180-kmh-on-hwy-417/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/york-driver-speeding-highway-vaughan-1.6466369
https://www.rcmp.ca/en/manitoba/news/2026/07/4354808
nah, not safe enough. we need them to go 32kmph. thats safe.
32,000 mph?!
That’s the only way they can get far enough away that I’ll be happy.
My car is governed to 100mph. It could go faster but it won’t.
Okay, but 100 mph is crazy fast…
But we also wouldn’t want it to be much lower since passing on 2-lane roads is generally safer at faster speeds, so putting a, say, 120 km/h speed limit on cars might be less safe than no limits.
“Crazy fast” is contextual to be honest. Going 100 mph in a school zone is crazy fast. Going 100 mph on the unlimited sections of the German autobahn is pretty tame.
This is also been the traditional challenge with speed limiters - You can’t set a single universal “safe” speed. That said, with GPS and traffic sign recognition, we can now use dynamic limiters to adjust to match the speed limit imposed where the vehicle is currently driving.
Having been on the autobahn in a shitbox Renault econobox rental, 100mph is plenty fast. In North America (especially the rust belt) with how shitty the vehicle safety inspection standards are, I honestly don’t trust the people around me to have maintained their car to an adequate standard to be safe driving at 100mph. Don’t even get me started on how shitty people’s driving skills tend to be.
A car is already a lethal projectile at 60mph. I don’t like the idea of increasing the lethality potential for the average highway driving mistake.
In theory. In practice the car picks up signs from the slip road or GPS location for the parallel local road or doesn’t know what the “in caso di nebbia” text under the 50km/h sign on the motorway means.