Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death • Hacker News Board

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#111

Post by chneu » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:28 AM UTC

milch wrote: post #107

RickS wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.elkandelk.com/washington/seattle-car-accident-st... Since it started in 2015, accidents are down 50%, but deaths up 90%. This analysis leaves a lot to be desired. I didn't see per-capita stats (Seattle had massive growth during a lot of those years), and we don't really enforce traffic laws at all anyway, so IDK what to think without digging in further.

I live in Seattle and anecdotally I have seen the number of people running red lights absolutely explode in the last two years. Literally from seeing once or twice pre-COVID to at least one a day. This is not an exaggeration, there's a particular light on my commute that I see at least one driver run per day. My theory is that in an effort to make the intersection safer they adjusted the lights so now there's a perio…

Traffic behavior, in general in the PNW, has gotten way worse. When I say worse I mean selfish. I think since COVID people are just more selfish.

I don't just mean assholes who do what they want. People just don't give a crap about others on the road at all anymore. A lot of folks who probably think they're driving "safe" are just driving selfishly slow and not following the law(super late blinkers, failing to move predictably with traffic, braking in traffic long before entering a turn lane).

It's definitely worse nowadays. I can think of plenty of reasons why. But really I think our society, generally, has started to reward selfish behavior. Or at least not punish it nearly enough to deter it's spread.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#112

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #93

efebarlas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to learn more about “it did not work in the us… excess deaths” Do you have a link handy for this?

Seattle traffic deaths: https://wtsc.wa.gov/dashboards/fatalities-dashboard/ - select "Seattle" in the city filter and "Pedestrian" in the filter below. This article has SF pedestrian deaths by year: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2026/pedestrian-fatalit... For Portland you need to check their police news archives, I couldn't find a dashboard. Here are the data from 2016 and 2024: https://www.portland.gov/trans…

[deleted]

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#113

Post by chneu » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #91

owenversteeg wrote: post #86

This is certainly a good thing, but for all the Americans self-flagellating in the comments, it is mostly because Helsinki is wealthy, tiny (600k people), and doesn’t drive that much - mostly because of its high population density. Compare it to wealthy US states and you’ll see similar numbers: Mass has 4 deaths per billion km, RI/MN/NH have 5, Switzerland/Sweden has 3, Germany has 4, Finland has 5, France has 6. If…

All of the people who self flagellate on these topics know that the wealthy urban Northeast has similar stats to Europe on any given issue. They're self flagellating because they can't just come out and say what "those people off in Iowa, yeah, well F them" or something along those lines.

I'm American and I find the way Americans misuse words, or completely misrepresent a concept, so we don't have to accept our failings to be really short sighted.

Americans lie to ourselves constantly to perpetuate our mistakes. We twist the meaning of words so we don't have to admit how selfish/shitty we can be.

You're right. Most Americans won't come out and say what they mean, so they'll dance around it. That's how so many racist Americans can say they aren't racist.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#114

Post by piva00 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 10:22 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #57

piva00 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have average car sizes and weight changed in this period of time?

You're asking the wrong question. The answer is 10% The interesting question is power-to-weight, which was (apparently) a direct result of EPA regulations that were enacted in 1975. The below article, which I found from a search engine copying your question and looking at a few results, is an interesting read. Ignoring all that, the actual question would be: how have car sizes and weights changed _in this region_ dur…

> Ignoring all that, the actual question would be: how have car sizes and weights changed _in this region_ during this period of time. Sizes and weights of cars in brasil have little bearing to accidents in the PNW, for example.

Sorry that I wasn't clear, that's exactly what I meant. I'm curious because it makes absolutely no sense that a safer urban design with separation of grades for cyclists, lowering speeds through design and engineering rather than just updating speed limit signs, would see an increase in deaths. Nowhere else in the world where those were implemented has had that effect, the Netherlands being the prime benchmark for it.

So there's something else at play, average car sizes in the USA are much larger than Europe (and most of the rest of the world), the urban road design is not changed that much: perhaps stroads just got new speed limits and were left at that, instead of narrowing them, adding trees and other obstacles that naturally makes driving slower and more cautious, so on and so forth.

There's also the added issue that American driving standards for a licence are incredibly low since it's kinda required for you to have a driver's licence to exist and have a life in the majority of the country.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#115

Post by tim333 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 11:01 AM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #68

These data free claims don’t ever honestly talk about how they simply made driving so inefficient and bad on purpose so that the other, slower modes, don’t look as bad. Increasing travel times and inconvenience isn’t a win and safetyism is irrational. If you can’t make fast driving safer you haven’t achieved anything really. And as for vision zero - you’ll never get perfect safety and it isn’t worth the tradeoffs.

In London they've deliberately made driving more of a pain doing thing like removing parking and reducing lanes with the idea of making it better for walking and cycling. Most people seem ok with the trade off.

I don't know about travel times and convenience. The last couple of years I've mostly switched to ebike and it's faster than anything in central London. The same journey of say 2 miles can take 10 mins by ebike, 15 taxi, 30 tube/bus, 20-40 private car driving in circles trying to park.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#116

Post by jasonfrost » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 12:33 PM UTC

skrrtww wrote: post #33

suzdude wrote: post #10

It is sad how little U.S. voters seem to care about anyone but themselves. Near everything the Finns are dong could be done in here, but too many voices would complain about the cost, the paternalism, or how they might be slightly inconvenienced. Those seem like harder challenges then the changes themselves.

When I was 12, I watched a redneck in a pickup truck try to race the light rail downtown and cut across the road in front of it, only to get T-boned by the railcar against a nearby station. It was the middle of the day and the guy was definitely sober. People in the U.S. are simply constructed differently, and as a result I think are unfortunately immune to a lot of the subtle forces that generally help to improve sa…

Ask yourself if calling him a redneck offers your story anything or if you're just using it as a slur

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#117

Post by busterarm » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #61

busterarm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd argue that the way that socialist Russia turned out was very specifically because of very greedy people, so not negating my point. Stalin basically appointed himself kings while using anti-king rhetoric to take down the Romanovs.

Except it's not just Russia...

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#118

Post by busterarm » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #62

busterarm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the SUV/pickup culture is bad enough here in the South but they place speedbumps aggressively all over the place here. Like 4" tall ones with no curve so that it absolutely slams the shit out of your small car if you're doing anything over 3mph. And they place them like every 8 feet. If you're in the lifted trucks most people drive here you can't even tell.

But if you imported a lifted truck, or another daft US vehicle like the Cybertruck into another country it would probably not be roadworthy and the traffic and speed calming measures are more appropriate. Bullbars used to be a trend in the UK, for example, until they were band in the late 90s/early 00s because they were fatal to pedestrians.

We also don't have pedestrians here and deer are everywhere -- bullbars are great here.

I once counted over 100 deer on or next to the road during a 20 minute night drive...

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#119

Post by busterarm » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

analognoise wrote: post #98

kelseyfrog wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every death under socialism is attributed to socialism. Every death under capitalism is attributed to individual failing or inevitability. Please follow the rules.

It’s a very convenient set of rules, that allow us to place all the deaths into another column in our tabulation.

Socialism's high death toll is the _direct_ result of the _implementation_ of socialist policies. No other form of governance shares this honor.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#120

Post by tombert » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #117

tombert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the way that socialist Russia turned out was very specifically because of very greedy people, so not negating my point. Stalin basically appointed himself kings while using anti-king rhetoric to take down the Romanovs.

Except it's not just Russia...

My point still stands.

I think a lot of the awfulness that has come out of the implementations of socialism has come from greed.

North Korea’s awfulness came because Kim Il Sung decided to appoint himself as king right after their revolution. Cuba’s awfulness came because Castro decided to appoint himself as king right after their revolution.

I could keep going, but my point is, and call their surrounding system whatever you want, these things are still a consequence of immense greed.

ETA:

You keep trying to turn what I said into some anti-socialist thing, which seems to imply that you think I am a socialist. I am not.

I think that a lot of the biggest issues with socialism come from greed. Greed is not good. Greed is bad. It’s bad when it’s in a capitalist context, it’s bad when it’s in a socialist context. It’s bad in every context. You can keep going on about how horrible you think socialism is if you want but that’s orthogonal to what I was saying.