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Comment by mschuetz | Hacker News Reader

Speed limits are important for non-cars. As a cyclist, I don't want people overtaking me 100km/h with a 1m gap. As a pedestrian trying to cross a small city or town street without dedicated crossing, I don't want drivers to suddenly appear with 100km/h from a small curve. I'd argue that 50km/h in a city is still too much. 30km/h should be the limit.

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As a pedestrian, I'm not ok with someone overtaking me at 30km/h with a 0.5m gap.

See? It's all discretionary. As should speed limits be (at the discretion of the driver, based on the current road conditions).

The problems you mention have other, better, actual solutions (e.g. cycling lanes, speed bumps before road crossings, ...).

> at the discretion of the driver

Doesn't the cyclist get a say? Or the pedestrian? Why should just the driver get to decide how much risk to impose on everyone else?

In my city, cycling lanes are never going to happen. And even if they were to happen, I would never ever want cars driving 100km/h through cities.

Cars drive through cities at that speed regularly. They use highways. That’s what the people are saying. With better strategies for putting cars and non-cars at decent distances, we can allow for cars to go faster with the same or lower risk. The issue right now is that people in cars want higher speeds and pedestrians/cyclists want to go all over the road like cars don’t exist. These two things don’t work and thus we have to go with whatever is the slowest of the equation here (people jumping into the street). The annoying part is when there are low speed limits but almost no pedestrian or cycling traffic on such roads. Highways are frequently an example of that in the US. (Literally no pedestrians or cyclists anywhere near but speed limits are frequently 55mph in some places but 80+ in others - no reasoning for the difference)

Have you ever consider that 1m gap is a product of speed limits? If we didn't have such limits, dedicated cycle lanes set apart from roads would become the norm imo.

Its not uncommon for cheap inadequate safety measures to supplant real ones.

> Have you ever consider that 1m gap is a product of speed limits?

It's hardly better on rural streets with 100km/h limit and lots of space to overtake. It's not a speed limit issue, it's an issue with car drivers not giving a damn about cyclists and pedestrians because they have no concept of how dangerous this is. Speed limits are essential in a city, and bumps are needed in addition to them.

I think this is a reasonable stance. Personally, I don't have a problem with the in-city, shared roads having very low limits.

I have a huge problem with enormous super-highways having 60mph limits or lower.

Some of the roads out where I live were engineered with going 90+ in mind. In fact, there's a tale of an engineer going such speeds and getting out of a ticket by explaining that to the judge out here.

What was the speed limit? When you're over 15 miles from the city, it's 60, but pass a turn in the road and it's 70.

This should be obvious. It's surprising you have to state this for those who only think about themselves and their fast cars.

Not all road users are car drivers!

Not all roads have multiple kinds of traffic!

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