Reaching those speeds on level ground doesn't seem possible for a normal human, but level ground is rare.
I think if we're talking about how fast you can get your bike to go, flat land, still air is implied. I don't have a lot of those conditions to try, but I'm happy to cruise around 15, and maybe push it to 20 if I don't need to save my energy for a nearby hill.
I used to be a back-of-the-front-of-the-pack triathlete, with a previous history as an ultramarathon and touring cyclist. In my best shape (probably aged around 46), I was training on a flat loop course with some younger very strong but not professional cyclists where we would generally pull the group at 28mph for about between 20-60 seconds at a time.
I appreciate that there's a distance between that sort of thing and an "average person", but it's not a whole lot larger than the distance between the people who were in the group and, say, professional tour cyclists.