Do cyclists have to stick to the speed limit?

On the contrary, the fact that cycles are not expressly mentioned in your quote could be precisely because they are considered as 'vehicles'.   

The speed limit section in RTAvcertainly refers to motorised vehicles (that are then further defined) Temp road works I believe follow the same definitions

The statutory interpretation of "Vehicle" within the Act is one propelled by a motor.

It doesn't include any vehicle propelled by human or animal power and indeed doesn't include animals in any circumstances.

The point made about byelaws is an interesting one. A young chap was nicked for riding at speed down one of the hills in Richmond Park a few years back. The Royal Parks Constabulary prosecuted him. He pleaded guilty at magistrates court. I believe he was ill-advised and should have pleaded not guilty. His defence would be that the alleged offence occured on a park main road with a 20mph speed limit, away from pedestrians and was not liable to cause a danger to any other park user. Furthermore, he could rightly argue that the byelaw should only apply to vehicles fitted with a statutory speedometer, which excludes cyclists.

And indeed Royal Parks have now admitted (2021) that speed limits in Richmond Park do not apply to cyclists, though there are signs that they are trying to change that with their proposal to impose a (ludicrous) 20mph cycling limit on Broomfield Hill. It's not that they couldn't impose a limit if they wanted (the roads within the park not counting as a public highway) but that the instruments they curently have in place cannot be applied to cyclists.

It's worse than that - it's actually a 10 mph speed limit that they're attempting to impose on Broomfield Hill. 

Going downhill that is absurdly slow and totally ignored.  I previously thought it might not be an issue going up the hill.  Then this evening I set PRs on 2 of the 10.7% gradient uphill segments, at 11.4 mph.  I'm in my mid-60s, and not particularly quick - others will be capable of exceeding the 10 mph "limit" uphill by a much bigger margin...

JohnP_SM7 wrote:

It's worse than that - it's actually a 10 mph speed limit that they're attempting to impose on Broomfield Hill.

That's truly absurd. I'd argue that it would be more dangerous, especially for a beginner rider, to be descending Broomfield desperately dragging the brakes and trying to stay under 10mph, especially on the camber, than it would be for them to freewheel down at 25. Just checked the segment on Strava and my record going up (from some years ago now!) is 17mph - if it wasn't for the financial cost it would be a badge of honour to get a ticket for speeding uphill, I'd have it framed!

Rendel Harris wrote:

That's truly absurd. I'd argue that it would be more dangerous, especially for a beginner rider, to be descending Broomfield desperately dragging the brakes and trying to stay under 10mph, especially on the camber, than it would be for them to freewheel down at 25. Just checked the segment on Strava and my record going up (from some years ago now!) is 17mph - if it wasn't for the financial cost it would be a badge of honour to get a ticket for speeding uphill, I'd have it framed!

Some utterly convoluted unlogicals there, Rendered, to justify your speed-lust.  Did you get this "justification" from a vroomcar website, where they are sure that 100mph is no problem for vroomcar drivists as they are all so good at it?

One feels that you strava-strivers have had your wetware scrambled by your queer lusts for speeding over bits of road as fast as possible for no reason whatsoever except an unaccountable addiction to a data-app.

Based on your 453 word teatime rant from yesterday, I'm not sure you should be throwing stones at "utterly convoluted unlogicals" from within your particular greenhouse.

There is a pattern of conflated presumptions and extrapolation in extremis going on.

I don't disagree that cyclists should be cautious in low speed limit areas, but I do disagree that cycling faster than the speed limit for motor vehicles is automatically careless. To link that to driving at 100mph is unfounded hyperbole.

GMBasix wrote:

I don't disagree that cyclists should be cautious in low speed limit areas, but I do disagree that cycling faster than the speed limit for motor vehicles is automatically careless. 

I'll send you some flowers and perhaps even a buncha grapes when you're in the hospital with serious gravel rash or worse. I won't be visiting you, though - in the hossie or the gaol, where they may put you if you mangle of murder whilst doing 39mph into a slow gran or even a fast bairn.

At least try to look where you're going rather than gazing at your gizmo for strava thrill, as you speed through the villages and urbans, overtaking cars wth a gesture and gurn of distain at their law-abiding and failure to be one of the cycling ubermen unrestrained by anything as mundane as speed limits. 

But I'm sure that you are "cautious" .... somehow .... even at 39mph in the 30 or even 20 zones.

Amusing as you can be old chap you don't half promulgate some unmitigated old tadgery at times. You've created a whole nonsensical narrative about people charging along staring at their Garmins at twice the speed limit through dangerous situations which is not what GMB is talking about at all. It's perfectly possible to exceed the speed limit for motor vehicles and be safe, e.g there's a 20mph road near me which is a long, dead straight 1% descent with very wide (2m+) grass verges on either side, then 2m wide pavements. The sightlines are such that any potential hazards can easily be identified a hundred yards away, and it's perfectly safe, and perfectly legal, to ride down there at 25mph. Stop assuming everyone is a talking about a worse case scenario which actually only exists within your fermentingly creative noggin.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Amusing as you can be old chap you don't half promulgate some unmitigated old tadgery at times. You've created a whole nonsensical narrative about people charging along staring at their Garmins at twice the speed limit through dangerous situations which is not what GMB is talking about at all. It's perfectly possible to exceed the speed limit for motor vehicles and be safe, e.g there's a 20mph road near me which is a long, dead straight 1% descent with very wide (2m+) grass verges on either side, then 2m wide pavements. The sightlines are such that any potential hazards can easily be identified a hundred yards away, and it's perfectly safe, and perfectly legal, to ride down there at 25mph. Stop assuming everyone is a talking about a worse case scenario which actually only exists within your fermentingly creative noggin.

Ha ha - a whole series of the usual drivel, based on made-up anecdotes, justifying the assumption of the egotist that he and his ilk are special, with no need to obey the usual laws, good manners or any considerations of others as "I know best and am a superb drivist/cyclist/everythingist".

Break one little law because "I'm special and know better" and it becomes easier and easier to break them all. Just observe any Toryspiv posh yob or the more numerous common-or-garden variety of yob.

Some cyclists are the same carloons who drive about everywhere too fast in their motorised lumps of tin; and with insufficient attention. They've convinced themselves that they're superior because they can roar about "at the limit" and get away with it 364 days out of 365. The law is "just advice, that clever & superior people like me can ignore". On the bike they also roar about albeit their roaring is not quite so momentum-dangerous when cycling as it is in their car.

My own cycling has involved decades of riding with a number of cycing clubs which, by their nature, tend to contain a number of those who ride beyond their competance as they imagine themselves in a daring-do road race. A good club curbs their stupidities, although there was a marked increase in inconsiderate and dangerous behaviour within most clubs when strava-striving became all the rage.

*********

Why become all tribal and go about portraying all cyclists as fullly considerate paragons of virtue who are never bad but only badly done to by others? The human group "those who cycle" contains just as high a proportion of inconsiderate and sometimes dangerous self-centred little skinbags as any other human group. Our bodyweight + bike may be a lot less dangerous than a carloon in a wankpanzer but that doesn't mean that cyclists can't cycle dangerously.

It's a simple enough observation that anyone can make, the above - if you don't don some tribalist blinkers that auto-exclude the sight of your tribe members doing any ill ever, whilst showing you only the bad stuff that the other tribes do.

Cugel wrote:

Break one little law because "I'm special and know better" and it becomes easier and easier to break them all.

There is no law that limits the speed of cyclists and so cyclists riding above the posted limit for motor vehicles are not breaking any laws. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

PS If I were going to make things up I would make up something slightly more interesting than "There is a road near me with a 20 mph limit for motor vehicles that it's safe to cycle down at 25 mph."

PPS You are always keen to regale us with how many decades you have been riding with cycling clubs: presumably you began long before accurate bicycle speedometers were available, so how did you ensure that you were always obeying the law?

Rendel Harris wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Break one little law because "I'm special and know better" and it becomes easier and easier to break them all.

There is no law that limits the speed of cyclists and so cyclists riding above the posted limit for motor vehicles are not breaking any laws. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

PS If I were going to make things up I would make up something slightly more interesting than "There is a road near me with a 20 mph limit for motor vehicles that it's safe to cycle down at 25 mph."

PPS You are always keen to regale us with how many decades you have been riding with cycling clubs: presumably you began long before accurate bicycle speedometers were available, so how did you ensure that you were always obeying the law?

See a reply to another of your pedantries about speed, elsewhere.

"To speed on a road" ... To travel too fast for the conditions such that unanticiapted hazards manifested ahead can't be avoided and collisions or other damaging events occur.

Speed limit signs don't mean, "Go at this speed". They mean, "This is the maximum speed above which it is illegal to go in a vehicle that comes with a speedometer built in". It only excludes bikes because they have no speedometer. But you can still go too fast (speed) for the conditions when on a bike.

There are other laws considering a more meaningful definition of "speeding" such as driving carelessly or dangerously; and cycling furiously. These, at bottom, include, "Cyling or driving too fast for the conditions to be safe from having an potential 'accident'". They can make you legally liable to prosecutions no matter if you are going at the speed limit, above it or below it.

More to the point, speeding (going too fast for the conditions) can do damage, often serious, even if you're doing it on a bike.

Surely this is completely obvious ...... unless you're just a biological robot with a simple program considering only the bare bones of the law about speed restriction signs?

Cugel wrote:

See a reply to another of your pedantries about speed, elsewhere.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the quality of accuracy is often described as pedantry by those who lack it.

Do feel free to keep on replying to my comments as you wish but I don't think I'll bother with yours from now on, as it's become increasingly clear that you are much more interested in handing out lengthy and pompous lectures than actually participating in any form of discussion or debate. All the best.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Cugel wrote:

See a reply to another of your pedantries about speed, elsewhere.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the quality of accuracy is often described as pedantry by those who lack it.

Do feel free to keep on replying to my comments as you wish but I don't think I'll bother with yours from now on, as it's become increasingly clear that you are much more interested in handing out lengthy and pompous lectures than actually participating in any form of discussion or debate. All the best.

I do enjoy a long and pompous lecture, delivered in a reedy tone of voice with a look down my long sneck at the victim receiver of my pearls. I can be more pedantic than even you. Not easy!

Here's another.

Your walk from the chamber signifies only that its you yourself that's not interested in participating in any form of discussion or debate. However pompous the lecture style, the only thing that counts is the cogency of the syllogisms; and more cogent refutations of their conclusions than an, "Well I think that.... (aka a bald opinion) and I'm going off in a huff if you don't agree". 

I know a mutual admiration society can be a source of comfort in this noisy world of hooted and screeched lunacies but such cosy societies can also induce a state of feeble "certainties" that soon crumble when reality gives them a bash.

Cyclists speeding through urbanity often get bashed. I've watched it happen just up ahead there. It was going to happen to them no matter how many other cyclists agreed with their claim that ego-speeding on a bike is perfekly safe in all circumstances, despite their previous seven crashes (all someone else's fault).

That's the definition of "motor vehicle". "Vehicle" doesn't appear to be defined in that Act. That said, Part IV on Speed Limits is all framed by reference to "motor vehicles" anyway.

BigBear63 wrote:

The statutory interpretation of "Vehicle" within the Act is one propelled by a motor.

Says who? Source?
Certainly The Traffic Signs Regulations and Directions 2002 implies that pedal cycles are vehicles, when it refers to vehicles other than pedal cycles:

"cycle lane” means a part of the carriageway of a road which—

if it may be used by vehicles other than pedal cycles, by the marking shown in diagram 1004 or 1004.1

Quote:

he could rightly argue that the byelaw should only apply to vehicles fitted with a statutory speedometer

Does the same logic apply to motorists charged with drink-driving; their vehicle isn't fitted with a statutory alcohol-meter?

In the UK, bicycles are considered vehicles under the Road Traffic Act of 1988 and are permitted to ride on the road.
A bicycle is a vehicle according to the UN's 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. The UK is a signatory of this convention.
The position of British cyclists was first established by the Local Government Act in August, 1888. It removed the right of local councils to treat cyclists among the "nuisances" it could ban and defined them as "carriages".

Oldfatgit wrote:

Isn't there a legal requirement to obey signage and legal instructions? Why are speed limit signs exempt from this, but a Stop sign (for example) aren't?

Speed limits are not exempt. Cyclists must obey all signs that apply to them. Speed limit signs don't.

Equally, car driver must obey all signs that apply to them. There is no need for a[n otherwise legal] car driver to comply with signs prohibiting heavy vehicles.

Motor vehicles are required to have an operating speedometer.

Pedal cycles are not.

'Why are speed limit signs exempt from this, but a Stop sign... aren't?'
If you had thought this through before posting this, you would realise the difference between a stop sign and speed limits; anybody knows when they have stopped but knowing what speed you are doing requires a speed measuring device, so clearly, a bicycle that is not fitted with a speedo must be exempt from speed limits.
 

Capt Sisko points out further down - motorbikes manufactured before 1984 don't need to have a speedometer fitted, but they aren't exempt from speed limits. (it was eye opening for me too!)

I agree with your overall point though - without a speedometer fitted, a cyclist would be guessing what speed they are going. I certainly wouldn't be able to tell if i was doing 29mph or 31mph without one.

But the majority of cyclists are probably rightly confident they are never, ever going to exceed 25 MPH. So you can say, fine, they don't need a speedometer, but the speed limit is still 30, and not knowing because you had no speedo is no defence to a charge.

I think that position is very contestible. With no obligation for a speedo, much less a calibrated one, what measures are cyclists to use to gauge speed? 

Fine, if they were overtaking cars, but on a general level I don't think a charge would stand up to court scrutiny. 

As someone has pointed out, there is no get-out for drink-driving on the grounds that you do not have a calibrated breathalyzer. I think that's a fair and valid analogy. If you want some degree of protection you can get a bike gps from amazon for £30 and work out for yourself how accurate it really is.

Strava says I peaked at 33 today, on an unrestricted road which I know and which has exactly one driveway opening on to it, for which I always slow down in case someone turns out and doesn't see me. 33 feels plenty fast even if the only danger is a front tyre blowout. Now look on google maps at the A386 running through Mary Tavy with literally dozens of roads and driveways on both sides. It just takes one retiree with less than 20/20 eyesight reversing out of their own drive and you are dead.

titaniumbloke wrote:

As someone has pointed out, there is no get-out for drink-driving on the grounds that you do not have a calibrated breathalyzer. I think that's a fair and valid analogy. If you want some degree of protection you can get a bike gps from amazon for £30 and work out for yourself how accurate it really is.

Strava says I peaked at 33 today, on an unrestricted road which I know and which has exactly one driveway opening on to it, for which I always slow down in case someone turns out and doesn't see me. 33 feels plenty fast even if the only danger is a front tyre blowout. Now look on google maps at the A386 running through Mary Tavy with literally dozens of roads and driveways on both sides. It just takes one retiree with less than 20/20 eyesight reversing out of their own drive and you are dead.

so you needed Strava to tell you what speed you were doing - did you need a calibrated breathalyzer to tell you how many alcoholic beverages you had as well?

It is much easier to know how many alcoholic beverages you have had, than whether you are doing 29mph or 33mph.

However, for nearly forty years speedos have been mandatory on new motorbikes. So the vast majority of motorbikes will have a speedo. Those that don't are ridden on the understanding that the rider needs to adhere to the speed limit somehow.

Rather than proving an argument for speed limits applying to cyclists, the motorcycle reference actually further demonstrates that you can't apply speed limits without also enforcing a means for drivers/riders to monitor their speed. 

Myself and Capt Sisko has this discussion further down the thread