That is already how it is set up in Europe.

Regular e-bikes have to have their electric assist limited to 25 km/h, but you can still pedal faster than that on your own power.
If an e-bike is not limited to 25 km/h, then it falls in the category of speed pedelec, which requires a licence plate and insurance.

However, it is trivially easy to illegally remove the limit on some models of e-bikes, and many people (mostly teenagers) do remove that limit. They then recklessly cycle at excessive speeds down the bike path, without regard of other cyclists who may be cycling there.

The issue in the Netherlands (idk about other place in Europe?) is lack of enforcement of the existing rules against tuning e-bikes.

That’s fair

Norway is both a monarchy and a democracy. There are several countries in Europe that are considered to be some of the most democratic in the world, which just happen to have a monarch as the head of state instead of a president.

What you are thinking of is an absolute monarchy, rather than a constitutional monarchy.

I don’t like the idea that we should be implementing sub-optimal laws with the assumption that they won’t be properly enforced anyway. Then it will be the same as all those other laws we already don’t sufficiently enforce, such as reckless road usage.

If we are going to implement a hard speed limit we should enforce that speed limit, and not just leave it at the discretion of the police officer to determine whether they feel like it is something that should be enforced or not.

Edit: That is why I argue in favour of an advisory speed, rather than a hard speed limit.

I’m also Dutch and I’m not against the idea of an advisory speed on the bike lanes (like they do in Belgium), but I think a hard speed limit at 20 km/h is too low and restrictive.

A lot of cyclists (including myself) naturally cycle at a speed faster than that, and are most comfortable cycling at that speed. This limit would also apply to them, not just the mopeds and e-bikes. That reduces cycling comfort, which I don’t think you should be doing if you want to encourage people to take the bike.

By all means tackle the problem of speeding mopeds and e-bikes, but don’t penalise the regular cyclist who cycles fast, but pays attention to their fellow cyclist and slows down when the situation calls for it.

I’ll copy my comment on this article from a different thread

As a Dutchman, I’m not a fan of this proposed speed limit.

My natural speed at which I comfortably cycle is around 25 km/h, which is perfectly safe if you pay attention and slow down when it is necessary in order not to hinder your fellow road users. The issue is people who cycle recklessly without keeping other cyclists in mind, in my opinion.

Enforcement is the key. And we already have reckless road usage laws.

I much prefer the Belgian method, where they set a recommended speed limit with signs of 25 km/h on the bikepath. You can cycle faster, but that’s at your own risk.

In the Netherlands there are two kinds of mopeds.

• Blue plates, which are (should be) capped at 25 km/h.
  They generally go where cyclists go (with the exception of Amsterdam where they have to go on the road) and are effectively treated as motorized bicycles.
• Yellow plates, which are (should be) capped at 45 km/h.
  They are supposed to go on the road, unless signs indicate otherwise. If they are on a shared bike/moped path (which is mostly found in rural areas) then the speed limit is 30 km/h in cities and 40 km/h outside cities.

Cycling on the road is not allowed in most cases in the Netherlands, if a bike path exists. Bike paths are usually signed with a round blue sign, which means the bikepath is mandatory for all cyclists.

In the Netherlands the issue is, from my understanding, that people are cycling increasingly late in life.

Elderly people cycling was always a common thing. But now that e-bikes are commonplace, elderly people are able to keep cycling for much longer than they would have been able to without the assistance of an e-bike.

When an elderly person falls or otherwise gets into an accident, they are far more likely to get severly injured and/or die than when that happens to someone younger.

As a Dutchman, I’m not a fan of this proposed speed limit.

My natural speed at which I comfortably cycle is around 25 km/h, which is perfectly safe if you pay attention and slow down when it is necessary in order not to hinder your fellow road users. The issue is people who cycle recklessly without keeping other cyclists in mind, in my opinion.

Enforcement is the key. And we already have reckless road usage laws.

I much prefer the Belgian method, where they set a recommended speed limit with signs of 25 km/h on the bikepath. You can cycle faster, but that’s at your own risk.

Edit: E-scooters are not normally road legal on Dutch roads, so you don’t see many of them.

Technically there is a path for a manufacturer to get an e-scooter tested for compliance, making them road legal. But virtually no manufacturers go through that process, making them defacto illegal (with some rare exceptions here and there)

1000/300 sounds like coax to me. That is the exact theoretical speed Ziggo could delivery if they upgraded their network to DOCSIS 3.1… But ofc upgrading is expensive, so they don’t do it.

I’m with Odido myself. That is a rebrand of the Dutch branch of T-Mobile.
Quite happy with their service generally. The mechanics had no idea what they were doing when connecting everything up, but once it was working it all worked flawlessly.

In the Netherlands symmetric fiber is the standard. I don’t think any company that offers fiber offers less than symmetric speeds

I have 1000 down / 1000 up personally.
They offer plans ranging from 100 / 100 to 8000 / 8000 at my address.

The only company that doesn’t offer symmetric is Ziggo, because they made the (wrong) bet that they didn’t need to invest in fiber. They only offer up to 1000 / 50 over coax.

While I agree that there is no real use for gigabit for the average person, I disagree that rolling out gigabit fiber everywhere was pointless.

For anyone who wants to use the internet for more than the basic consumption of content, the old upload speeds were a significant barrier. Gigabit, and especially gigabit upload largely removes those barriers.

Symmetric gigabit in every home has taken away a bottleneck for people who want to run a bandwidth intensive internet business from their home. It provides people with opportunities they might otherwise not get.

Why is 6 afraid of 7?

Because 7 is a registered six-offender

Racist schmucks had it coming, frankly

Edit: Just wanted to add some context, so there is no confusion.

The day prior, this group had been breaking into immigrants homes, pulling them out on the street, and committing arson. They committed arson again today, and were reportedly planning to head to a nearby hotel housing immigrants.

These aren’t “protesters”, they are racists looking to terrorise immigrants.

If ever there is a moment when the police is justified in using violence, this is it.
I’m shedding no tears for these racists being hit in the face with a water canon.

Replying to this with “ACAB” tells me that either you haven’t bothered to look into what was going on, and are just aping American talking points. Or you are siding with the racists terrorising people based on the colour of their skin.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it’s ignorance.

Me too, but I usually don’t watch football anyway so it’s not exactly different from standard operating procedure

I’m not sure if France has class-action lawsuits, but if that happens I’d imagine you could point to this fine by the French Trade Commission as evidence of harm.

Irish GDP is largely driven by their status as a tax haven. American companies set up a company in Ireland in order to evade taxes through a loophole that exists between the two countries’ tax codes.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the 12% reduction in GDP is largely in that sector (Though admittedly I have not watched the video)

That wouldn’t be a huge issue for Ireland. The inflated GDP figures “deflating” doesn’t necessarily affect the real economy. GDP is just a metric and in the case of Ireland it is highly skewed.

They are the Anti-Defamation League.
Their stated goal is combatting anti-Semitism, but in practice they mainly target criticism of Israel.