60 kph seems really high for residential, yikes
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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The problem is also that likely no one did 60, but rather close to 70.
So for everyone thinking 30 is too low, do not fret, people will just drive 40 anyhow and that is not too slow.
Definitely. If you're not going the "customary" 10 over, people will often ride right on your ass everywhere I've driven in Japan.
Edit: I can't grammar today
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Not in Switzerland, hehe.
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Surprised as that’s even faster than most places in the car-brained US. It’s “only” 48kph (30mph) on the high side and 32kph (20mph) most other places
Right?? I’m in the US and was really surprised that even we consider that way too fast for residential. It’s 20mph on my street and I would be livid with anything over 30
Japan actually does very little in the way of pedestrian or bicycle friendly road design compared to most European countries (there are a few things worth learning from IMO, just not as many as, say, the Netherlands).
It works as well as it does because of the narrow streets and how little car traffic they have (even less than the Netherlands, which does way more to try and reign in cars but has way more of them). They have so little car traffic because you have to prove you have a permanent parking space in order to buy a car, there's no on-street parking, and the public transit network is very extensive. That and the aforementioned narrow streets just make driving inconvenient compared to the other options.
30 km/hr means people can legally drive EV autocycles on roads.
No, the aspect ratio is correct.
Largest Japanese vheicle /s
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They've done this in a few areas of Melbourne. The fatal injury data is certainly a compelling case:
"the risk of fatality for a pedestrian hit by a vehicle travelling at 30km/h is around 10%, compared to approximately 40% at 40km/h and more than 80% at 50km/h."
https://acrs.org.au/evidence-supports-30km-h-speed-limits-in-school-zones/
I will admit that driving at 30km/h is pretty painful sometimes.
I will admit that driving at 30km/h is pretty painful sometimes.
That's probably street design issue.
broader city design too, you shouldn't really have to spend much time on residential streets. It should be like a circulatory system, most of the traffic is on a small number of high-speed high-capacity through-roads and then it quickly splits apart into a bunch of smaller local streets.
This. 30km/h is common in Germany and if the road design is good, then it feels perfectly fine.
It's also an issue of sitting in a box being shielded from the outsides. 30 km/h on a bicycle feels very different from 30 km/h in a metal box.
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Sidewalks are quite rare outside major corridors in space-constrained Japan (you're often lucky to get so much as a gutter or a hint of a shoulder to walk/cycle on), so this is an overdue move indeed.
Pictured below is a pretty normal street width/layout in both rural and urban Japan, and the street I lived on was about 30-50% narrower than even this, and had high walls on either side (zero setbacks).
yikes. it's 60kph now on a street like that? half that seems far more reasonable, even without giant trucks and suv on the streets.
Yeah but it's Japan. So, in my experience at least, if driers can see pedestrians they're not driving that fast at all. It would be dishonourable 😄 but seriously, they're driving carefully.
Just passed my driving test. You're legally obligated to drive bellow 10 km/h or stop completely if there are pedestrians on roads like this.
There we have it, everyone!
You know I couldn't imagine going 40 miles an hour down that road but I'm sure people do
My carbrain seeing the title: Wtf, 30 for normal residential areas is a bit TOO low, we have 50 in most of Europe and that's just fine
My carbrain after seeing the photo: Nah this would be 20 in my country and in the vicinity of pedestrians, at pedestrian speed. AKA you'd definitely see one of these signs.
It's wild they allowed 60 on streets like this in the first place. That must feel like street racing going down this narrow alley. I was sort of expecting a regular street with a sidewalk upon seeing the title and the fact that it used to be 60.
are you sure you're not thinking of the default urban speed limit? That's 50kmph here in sweden too, but actual residential streets almost universally have a signed 40 or 30kmph limit.
Most residential areas in Estonia are the default urban speed limit, sometimes they're limited to 30. 40 is rare but exists too. Usually someone has to complain for speed limits to get put up.
The living street sign is in places where kids play on the street often, etc. Tbh I think more residential areas should have that, but it does come with the caveat that you need to stop the car and either exit or have a passenger enter or exit within the residential area. Passing through is not allowed, which means you can't put it on bottleneck streets unless the entire area on one side of the street is covered too
It's going to 30km/h (20mph) in many more countries now as a result of the Stockholm Declaration on Road Safety in 2020 (later endorsed by the UN) which puts a lot of emphasis on specifically 20lm/h speed limits. In the UK there is a big push for 20mph; in Wales most roads have been made 20mph.
There are still 3,558 pedestrian deaths per year in the EU, while there are 7,080 per year in the US.
The Stockholm Declaration aims for 50% fewer road deaths in 2030 compared to 2020.
A pedestrian hit at 30 km/h has about a 90% chance of surviving, but at 50 km/h, survival drops to about 20%. So while I get the appeal of driving fast, I think it's a very reasonable measure. 1000s of deaths per year to shave minutes off arrival times is not acceptable.
Source: am cycling campaigner in the UK
I'm assuming that it had stayed so high for so long precisely because almost everyode was driving well under the speed limit.
I hope so.
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Good. It's crazy it was that high. 50 km/h is already very fast for a small street.
No more Isekai truck-kun
With 20 MPH (32 km/h), this is also becoming more and more standard in residential areas in the UK.
And the resulting massive drop in numbers of fatal accidents speaks for itself.
idk why people writing "kilos per hour" pisses me off so much. 1000 what per hour? Surely any other letter makes more sense to remove than the actual unit??
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
everyone knows you just omit the entire thing, it's just "japan lowers speed limit from 60 to 30"
That's the USA for you, they have MPH so no way they use something as serious as km/h, gotta USify that.
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In the us we just raise the speed limit to 65 mph in school zones and give everyone a lifted blacked out f250.
I guess it will reduce noise pollution a lot too.
I'm not sure ... will there still be enough people getting isekai'd after this change? Other worlds might run low on personnel ...
You don't need speed to kill on the road.
Source: konosuba
I thought it already went into effect. People in the Japanese countryside often drive like dickheads.
certainly will make bikes competitive.
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