SLOVAKIA wants people to slow down on its sidewalks and has enforced a strict speed limit.
From January 1 anyone traveling more than 3.7mph on a sidewalk in the Central European country could be in trouble with the police.
Introduced into Slovak parliament last year, the new law does not apply to pedestrians, but rather sidewalk users such as e-scooters, bicycles and other mobility vehicles.
The law was introduced by Transport Minister Ľubomír Vážný with intention of increasing safety for all sidewalk users.
“The main goal is to increase safety on sidewalks in light of the increasing number of collisions with scooter riders,” Vážný told local media in October last year.
He also argued the amendment to the law would help “especially in cases where it’s necessary to objectively determine whether they were moving faster than what’s considered an appropriate speed in areas meant primarily for pedestrians.”
When settling on the 3.7mph (6km) limit, Slovak lawmakers measured against the threshold of upper limit of the average adult walking speed.
The law was met with derision from the from opposition party, Progressive Slovakia (PS) who argued the limit would be too slow for bicycles or other vehicles which could create dangerous situations in themselves.
“This is a populist and meaningless proposal that is not based on any data. Six kilometers per hour is not a traffic measure, but a parody of mobility,” said PS’ Martin Pekár said in October.
“If we want fewer collisions, we need to have more safe cycle paths, not absurd limits that cannot even be met physically. At the speed in question, a cyclist can barely keep his balance,”
Others argued the speed limit may push mobility vehicles users and other to use roads in order to travel faster, and thus putting them at risk of collision with bigger vehicles.
Slovaks also took to social media to poke fun at the law and wondered if they would get into trouble for running to catch a bus — lawmakers confirmed they would not.
While others joked that children riding on bicycles with their families could easily break the speed limit.
Some pointed out it would be hard to measure people’s speed on sidewalks as police radar equipment does not register speeds as low as 3.7mph.
