not sure why you getting downed, for highways this is totally the case. In my country your vehicle must prove to be able to sustain at least 70km/h, or else it's banned from highways and high-speed motorways.
I think it’s because 70km/h is not “close to the speed limit” and also because there are countless reasons why you cannot drive a bicycle or a horse carriage on a highway besides the speed you travel at.
> there are countless reasons why you cannot drive a bicycle [...] on a highway besides the speed you travel at.
What reasons other than speed are there for keeping bicycles off fast roads? Motorcycle can be very nearly just as small and vulnerable as bicycles, but they can keep pace with cars and consequently they're allowed on every road.
Bicycles are much more unstable than motorcycles, it’s more difficult for bicycles to avoid objects in some situations since you cannot brake and accelerate in a small timeframe, they take more time to return to a high speed after you brake, etc.
Same reasons why you cannot drive small motorcycles on highways here in Italy, even if they can easily reach 110km/h they are not allowed on even second tier highways.
I don't know what it's like in Italy, but in America bicycles are allowed on almost all roads, except for limited access highways. They're even allowed on most regular highways, to the chagrin of many car drivers. The poor acceleration of bicycles is the worst on roads where frequent stops are expected (for intersections) but bicycles are allowed on almost all of those roads, particularly city streets which obviously have abundant intersections. Limited access highways don't have intersections that would frustrate cyclists, but as a consequence of not having intersections those roads have much higher speeds that cyclists can't keep up with. Furthermore, heavy trucks have terrible acceleration, much worse than cyclists, but are allowed on all of the limited access highways that bicycles are banned on.
Maybe it's different in Italy, but in America the restrictions on bicycles really seem to be about top speed, not acceleration.
I get what you say, and sure laws are different from country to country.
Overall the reasons why you cannot drive bicycles on highways are many, but when you put them all together it mostly fall under one term: safety.
What I wanted to say on my original comment is that trying to put an autonomous driving car in a urban situation is not about checking the speed limit from a road sign, looking at a ground stop or other road signals. If you want a safe autonomous car in an urban center it must be aware of the context much more than “this is a stop sign” or “speed limit is 50km/h”, that’s why I praise Mercedes for trying to solve the solvable problems first and then move to more complex ones.
