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Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

politico.eu

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

#21

Post by randerson »

cyberax wrote: post #3

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths are up in all the large coastal US cities that went full-on with the "Zero Vision" policies. Seattle, Portland, SF enshittified their roads, limited the traffic speed, choked the streets with bike lanes, drank all the KoolAid. Yet the deaths _increased_.

But there's practically zero enforcement and everyone knows it. You have the few law abiding people doing 25 while others are doing 50 while stoned and texting.. on the same road.

Narrowing lanes creates new hazards because cars sold are only getting larger and can barely fit. There is too often no margin for error.

There are no roadworthiness inspections in these states. Many people are driving on worn tires and suspensions. Most people don't even know what types of tires they have or what the tire pressures are.

Don't even get me started on how easy it is to get a driver's license with no clue how to drive. If they wanted to reduce deaths they should start by raising the bar on license difficulty.

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

#22

Post by quickthrowman »

RandallBrown wrote: post #4
cyberax wrote: post #3

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths are up in all the large coastal US cities that went full-on with the "Zero Vision" policies. Seattle, Portland, SF enshittified their roads, limited the traffic speed, choked the streets with bike lanes, drank all the KoolAid. Yet the deaths _increased_.

Seattle lowered the speed limit on a lot of roads, but didn't do much else beyond add a few "No turn on red" signs. So now you have a road where the speed limit used to be 35, but is large and straight enough to comfortably go 45, with a speed limit of 25. That causes people to go wildly different speeds and (in my opinion) makes it a lot more dangerous.

> Seattle lowered the speed limit on a lot of roads, but didn't do much else beyond add a few "No turn on red" signs.

As you said, that doesn’t do anything since the road is designed to go 35-45 MPH, that is how fast people will go, with the exception of inflexible rule followers that drive 25 MPH and cause dangerous speed differentials.

My city has been doing traffic calming projects where they redesign the road for the speed they want people to drive at and that has actually worked well.

All lowering the speed limit does is make it easier for cops to harass poor people, it doesn’t actually change the way people drive.

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

#23

Post by mianos »

Masses of speed cameras and a 30kph speed limit. We have this here in Sydney, but it's mixed 30/40/50 between every intersection and most of the major intersections have red light cameras as well as speed cameras. It's godammned utterly horrible to drive in. Most people I know, who when they were young never got a ticket, have now a few fines.

If you try and drive somewhere unfamiliar here you are pretty much guaranteed to get some sort of ticket as half the roads are one way, and you can't turn into the other half for random reasons.

Oh, most left hand red arrows in the city, start red when the main light goes green, and they have cameras on them too. You can literally see the camera lights flashing non stop when you walk along.

Add to this, zero rules for pedestrians, no one waits for the lights if they can see a break in the traffic.

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

#24

Post by cyberax »

Supermancho wrote: post #17
cyberax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick question: are you an urbanist? > "The city saw 25 traffic deaths in 2025, down from 43 in 2024" The number of traffic deaths in SF in 2016 before the main enshittification started: 30. Deaths in 2017: 20. Here's a chart for Seattle: https://wtsc.wa.gov/dashboards/fatalities-dashboard/ - it went from 6 fatalities in 2016 to 20 fatalities last year. Same for Portland, it went up from 13 to 22. Sorry, but the data…

> Sorry, but the data is completely unambiguous. Focusing on the metrics you want to focus on, does not make the data unambiguous. eg This analysis has not accounted for cohort sizing. Are there more or less pedestrians? What is the average distance? How many bicyclists? et al.

The "Zero Vision" policy has zero pedestrian deaths as its goal. It's literally in its name.

Why shouldn't I look at the metric it's supposed to improve?

> Are there more or less pedestrians? What is the average distance? How many bicyclists? et al.

So you're saying that we should sacrifice pedestrians so that people can bike?

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

#25

Post by RandallBrown »

maest wrote: post #18
RandallBrown wrote: post #8

I can't say I'd be excited about 19 mph speed limits enforced by cameras, but I don't doubt it would work. I'd love for my city to just focus on making other forms of transportation more appealing. More bus lanes, more (properly designed) bike lanes, etc.

Why do you need to go faster in a city center?

You probably don't need to go faster in the city center, but you need to get to the city center somehow.

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

#26

Post by efebarlas »

cyberax wrote: post #20
philip1209 wrote: post #13

Oslo has been doing this for years. I wrote a blog post about my learnings there - "Engineering over enforcement": > Enforcement philosophy is rooted in the idea that behavior can be controlled by threatening punishments. Engineering philosophy believes that infrastructure can be designed to incentivize desired behavior. When Oslo sought to reduce pedestrian deaths, it turned to engineers. > [ . . .] Intersections ar…

[flagged]

I want to learn more about “it did not work in the us… excess deaths”

Do you have a link handy for this?

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

#27

Post by philip1209 »

mooreds wrote: post #16
philip1209 wrote: post #13

Oslo has been doing this for years. I wrote a blog post about my learnings there - "Engineering over enforcement": > Enforcement philosophy is rooted in the idea that behavior can be controlled by threatening punishments. Engineering philosophy believes that infrastructure can be designed to incentivize desired behavior. When Oslo sought to reduce pedestrian deaths, it turned to engineers. > [ . . .] Intersections ar…

AKA "make the right things easy" and "build sensible defaults" rather than "all the responsibility is the individuals".

there's a reason speedbumps are called "silent policemen"

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

#28

Post by RickS »

philip1209 wrote: post #13

Oslo has been doing this for years. I wrote a blog post about my learnings there - "Engineering over enforcement": > Enforcement philosophy is rooted in the idea that behavior can be controlled by threatening punishments. Engineering philosophy believes that infrastructure can be designed to incentivize desired behavior. When Oslo sought to reduce pedestrian deaths, it turned to engineers. > [ . . .] Intersections ar…

This is the way. It's maddening that we use the term "speed limit" for what is better understood as a "speed request".

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

#30

Post by RickS »

efebarlas wrote: post #26
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

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.

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