Cyklistforbundet, Denmark’s national cyclists’ association, has thrown its full support behind a proposal from Copenhagen’s mayor for climate, technical and environmental affairs, Line Barfod, to bring the city’s default speed limit down to 30 km/h.
Cyklistforbundet speed limit support isn’t new
Kenneth Øhrberg Krag, director of Cyklistforbundet, described lower speeds in Copenhagen as simply common sense, pointing out that the association itself put forward the same proposal two years ago. His argument centres on flipping the current logic: making 30 km/h the normal speed across the city, with higher, more dangerous speeds treated as the exception rather than the rule.
Pedestrian survival rate 30 km/h: the numbers behind the push
According to Øhrberg Krag, that shift would translate directly into fewer deaths and injuries in traffic, alongside cleaner air and less noise, with particular benefit for the most vulnerable road users: children, teenagers and the elderly. He cited research showing that injuries to pedestrians and cyclists struck by a car are substantially less severe at 30 km/h compared with 40 or 50 km/h. At 30 km/h, roughly nine out of ten pedestrians and cyclists survive being hit by a car, a figure that drops sharply to just three out of ten at 50 km/h.
Barely any impact on driving times, association argues
Øhrberg Krag also pushed back on the assumption that lower speed limits would meaningfully lengthen car journeys through the city during rush hour. He pointed to studies from cities including Brussels showing that a 5 to 10 kilometre drive through an urban area saw average journey times increase by only around 5 to 10 seconds under a 30 km/h limit. That effect would naturally apply across every car on the road and carry some knock-on impact for overall productivity, in his view, but he argued it’s a genuinely small trade-off set against the reduced severity of accidents for pedestrians and cyclists, along with the broader environmental and public health benefits a lower speed limit would bring.
