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* unnecessarily high speed limits
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Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
131–140 of 696 posts
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other places have introduced the same limit and haven't seen the same results. People who are likely to have crashes are likely to be able who ignore the limit. One of the biggest problems in modern policy-making is the introduction of wide-ranging, global policies to tackle a local problem (one place that introduced this limit was Wales, they introduced this limit impacting everyone...but don't do anything about the…
> People who are likely to have crashes are likely to be able who ignore the limit. ... which is why you have to do actual road design. You can't just put up a speed sign and hope people will magically abide by it. Roads need to be designed for the speed you want people to drive. When done properly the vast majority of drivers will follow the speed limit without ever having to look at the signs, because it'll be the…
It isn't road design, it is behavioural/cultural. People will drive recklessly when they do not care, for whatever reason, about the people they may injure by doing so. That is it. If you look at comparisons between countries, it is clear that means are different.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. This seems like a weird argument. If your commute is an hour at 50 km/h then it's an hour and 40 minutes at 30 km/h, every day, each way. That seems like... quite a lot?
See, the real problem is that people cover too much distances daily. 50km is more than Luxembourg is wide where it's narrowest. They probably don't commute internationally every day there.
Actually a lot of people do, because it's cheaper to live and shop on the other side of the border.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#134I was in Helsinki for work a couple of years ago, walking back to my hotel with some colleagues after a few hours drinking (incredibly expensive, but quite nice), beer. It was around midnight and we happened to come across a very large mobile crane on the pavement blocking our way. As we stepped out (carefully), into the road to go around it, one of my Finnish colleagues started bemoaning that no cones or barriers ha…
There actually was an incident last year where a man fell to his death at a construction site in Helsinki. I think the man's companion said there was a small gap in the fencing at the time.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#135Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars. And they apparently only 21% of daily trips used a private car. Helsinki has about 3x fewer vehicles per capita than the average U.S. city. So it’s not surprising it’s safer since fewer cars mean fewer chances of getting hit by one. Plus their cars are much smaller. In fact, there are probably plenty of U.S. towns and cities with similar number of cars that have zero tra…
Itll for sure get worse once most cars are autonomous and are programmed badly
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#136Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great reason to have snap elections instead of scheduled elections. Mayor Adams will scorch the earth to get the votes of a handful of extremists in his quixotic reelection attempt, and will harm lots of people in doing so.
How does snap elections solve this problem? You'd have less information if it happened in the next week, especially about less well known candidates. You are suggesting that elections coming in a few months leads to tricking people?
It creates conditions for more direct accountability. There's a pretty standard pattern of getting elected, doing the more extreme things, and then giving the voters time to cool off before the election happens.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#138Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure. Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys. This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be…
Streets with low speeds are themselves decent bike infrastructure.
If people actually stick to those speed limits.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#140Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars. And they apparently only 21% of daily trips used a private car. Helsinki has about 3x fewer vehicles per capita than the average U.S. city. So it’s not surprising it’s safer since fewer cars mean fewer chances of getting hit by one. Plus their cars are much smaller. In fact, there are probably plenty of U.S. towns and cities with similar number of cars that have zero tra…
Have you been to Finland? It is a very safety conscious culture. This isn’t just some fluke.