In contrast, the US had over 40,000 traffic deaths in each of 2016, 2017, and 2018.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/traffic-d...
Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
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Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#312It's quite hard to drive in Oslo now. Not impossible but it's not very fun and the speed limits are very low. When I have to go inside "ring 1", I usually drive to a free parking/charging spot for electric cars and walk from there. It's quite close to aker brygge and close to the high way. Back when I was living in Oslo (and didn't have children) I didn't have a car at all, no need for it.
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Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a cultural problem, not a crosswalk light problem. Most people (myself included) automatically slow down when driving into a crosswalk. Our intersections are usually fairly small, so it's hard to build up any speed, even if you wanted to.
Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether. For example, pulling up to an intersection and only looking to the left before making a right turn, because that is the only direction that car traffic can be coming from. It isn't every car by any means, but enough cars that pedestrians need to assume that drivers are incompetent until given evi…
> In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether.
This is pretty limited to urban areas, in my experience. In more suburban and rural parts of the country, people are much more cautious and obedient to traffic signals and rights of way. Of course there are exceptions in both cases, but running red lights, turning into pedestrians/cyclists/etc is much more prominent in major cities. As an urban pedestrian, I just have to keep my head on a swivel because there's a good chance that the taxi/Uber across from me is going to run the light that just turned red so he can make his left turn instead of waiting for his signal.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#314I don’t understand why this is a big deal. Oslo has basically made driving so inconvenient and so inefficient, that all of its benefits relative to other modes of transportation are taken away. In those conditions, for example lowering speed limits dramatically, obviously reducing deaths is not hard.
What is being completely left out of this conversation is the impact on quality of life. Cars are simply far more convenient than public transit or biking or walking, when supported appropriately by infrastructure and policy. In the absence of “traffic calming” measures (a euphemism for making driving painful) that accompany Vision Zero initiatives, cars are fast, don’t involve waiting time, and are a point to point option that takes you straight to where do you want to go.
Everything in life involves some degree of risk. I’m OK with having convenient car driving options and incurring a higher degree of risk as a result. A small number of deaths does not make me feel generally “unsafe” on the roads and I will happily take the reduced travel times as a trade off. The CDC’s data also indicates that vehicle related injuries and deaths have been falling since the 1980s, unrelated to recent traffic calming measures. I bet this trend will continue with rapid declines caused by the standardization of back up cameras, collision avoidance, lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, and so on. I don’t think it is worth trying to optimize for perfect safety when we already have good-enough safety, and we should retain fast travel times instead of letting the boogeyman of safety rule all decisions.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just one comment, large cars are not necessarily safer, and small cars can be safe, too. SUVs are not only notorious for their awful gas mileage but also how unsafe they can be for the pedestrian or other car they hit if they do.
Assuming they’re built with the same safety technologies, larger cars are absolutely safer. https://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/are-smaller-cars-as-safe-...
Safer for their occupants, at least.
Not necessarily for the other cards on the road, or pedestrians.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#316One interesting observation on Oslo is that, pedestrians do cross the street when it's red for them, if there's no moving traffic close by. This is totally different from, for example, Copenhagen, Stockholm and places I visited in Germany. They're like Italians of the north. That's probably why we felt at home on the streets during our stay there, as a family from Turkey. I would love to have that 0 deaths statistics…
"Turks have invaded and slaughtered scores of European peoples in the last thousand years. Recently in Cyprus, Syria, and Kurdistan. They're like the Germans of Central Asia"
See what I did there? Keep your opinions of Italians to your self.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure what you mean with this effectiveness. I live in Prague, the city with (what they say) one of the best public transport systems in the world, and yet, going to my workplace is 45 minutes by public transport and 15 minutes by car. Even though I live close to a subway and tram station, and the workplace is right in the city center, car still wins - where is the effectiveness you're talking about? This is…
It is (almost) the same for every city, if you compare driving times from suburbs to city centre. The reason is that city train/metro/tram needs to stop on 15+ stations before reaching the inner city. Still, to me, train is superior - I can just sit and relax. Driving is much more tiring. 15 minutes or so difference is not worth it.
For suburb to city center, you want multi-track train lines which only stop at a few stations and then switch over to a middle track which then goes the rest of the way downtown without stopping. The suburb I grew up in was about 20 miles outside of Chicago and the rush hour express train would get you downtown in about 25 minutes whereas doing the same route by car would take you 40-100 minutes during rush hour.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#318One interesting observation on Oslo is that, pedestrians do cross the street when it's red for them, if there's no moving traffic close by. This is totally different from, for example, Copenhagen, Stockholm and places I visited in Germany. They're like Italians of the north. That's probably why we felt at home on the streets during our stay there, as a family from Turkey. I would love to have that 0 deaths statistics…
No, in Sweden we also cross when there are no cars nearby. At least in Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#319The entire country (Norway) had 0 children traffic deaths in 2019. In total 110 traffic deaths, of which 72% were men, very similar to the past few years. About 2/3rd of deaths were drivers or passengers in a car (the rest motorbike or pedestrian), and of those in cars 1/3rd were not using a seat belt. So it's likely you could get an immediate decrease in total traffic deaths of close to 20% if you could just force e…
Seatbelt issue is probably going away. My car will nag the hell out of me if anyone isn't wearing a seatbelt at speeds over 20 km/h. I assume this is true for most modern cars. Part of the population who didn't grow up with seatbelts is aging. I remember my late grandmother hated the seatbelts, they didn't exist when she grew up. Often she would pretend to use the belt, holding it in place by hand so that it looked l…
Is that easily bypassed? I don't need my car nagging me because I put a large box in my back seat.
Re: Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, it is definitely a huge cultural problem. In the US, many drivers will ignore the existence of pedestrians altogether. For example, pulling up to an intersection and only looking to the left before making a right turn, because that is the only direction that car traffic can be coming from. It isn't every car by any means, but enough cars that pedestrians need to assume that drivers are incompetent until given evi…
And then also, many pedestrians see the walk sign and just start crossing while staring at their phone without even glancing around to be sure there aren't any inattentive drivers heading their way.
While true, the distractedness (on the part of the pedestrian or the driver) doesn't absolve the driver of their responsibility to yield in this scenario. A driver who hits a pedestrian in this scenario will be subject to criminal and civil penalties, and rightly so.