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Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

helsinkitimes.fi

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Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#221

Post by tlogan »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #204
tlogan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Though implementing it is far easier said than done. Here in San Francisco (and much of California), things are incredibly complicated. Take this example: in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are n…

> in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are no school buses. Could you explain this policy a little more, or provide some references? I see SFUSD does some sort of matchmaking algorithm for enrollment, so what happens…

Children may not attend their neighborhood school in SFUSD because the system prioritizes diversity, equity, and access over proximity. They do that to address racial and economic segregation but basically it was the cheapest way to solve the problem. See Board Policy 5101.

I think in 2027, SFUSD might be transitioning to an elementary zone-based assignment system. I’m not anymore involved in that but I can tell that is a very very politically charged. Very ugly. All they did it make website more confusing.

In the end, only 20% of kids ended up going to their neighborhood schools. [1]

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/sf-sch...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#222

Post by Saline9515 »

Muromec wrote: post #197
ath3nd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives The average American mind can't comprehend European public transport and not sitting in a traffic jam and smog for 1 hr to go to their workplace. Some of us walk or cycle for 15 min on our commutes, and some of us even ride bicycles with our children to school. It takes me as much time to reach my workplac…

Take better from both worlds -- 1 hour bike commute and save on healthcare costs too.

Very entitled comment. The food worker who has to stand up for the whole day to make your matcha frappuccino could enjoy some rest on the way home.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#223

Post by rcxdude »

cyberax wrote: post #205
timeon wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actively worse for everyone Can you elaborate?

Second-order effects. Bikes are nothing but misery generators. They are the absolute WORST commute mode, so people (on average) choose literally anything else when they have that option. We have plenty of proof for that. There are cities with great bike _and_ car infrastructure, and the percentage of bike commutes is about the same as everywhere else. So the only thing that bike lanes do is sabotage cars and other gr…

Really? because I live somewhere where this works quite well: cycling is on average the best way to get around, especially in terms of door-to-door time, and it's something that a huge fraction of people use. I have basically zero reason to buy a car: even if there was zero traffic on the road it's not worth the quite substantial cost.

(And, to a large extent, the biggest contributor to it being a good place to cycle is the fact that everyone does it: a whole city's worth of protected bike lanes can't make up for a driver who's not used to driving around cyclists. But it is certainly possible to make road layouts that make safe cycling basically impossible, and American city planners seem to have mastered that)

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#224

Post by derektank »

pantalaimon wrote: post #202
tlogan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Though implementing it is far easier said than done. Here in San Francisco (and much of California), things are incredibly complicated. Take this example: in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are n…

What kind of policy is that based on? Seems very counter intuitive, aren't are supposed to meet your classmates after school?

It was a decision intended to foster racial and socioeconomic diversity, adopted in 2020[1]. It will likely be reversed in the 2026/2027 school year[2]

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WxAVUXfKCdhSlFa8rYZqTBC-Zmz...

[2] https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-poli...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#225

Post by derektank »

levocardia wrote: post #185
egypturnash wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see a Cybertruck while I'm on my bike I am stunned at how badly that thing is designed, it's got a hood higher than my head and a front that slopes backwards as it goes down, so that anything it hits is just naturally shoved under it, this is a machine built for vehicular homicide. How the fuck did that get allowed on the road at all.

FWIW Cybertruck (and all other teslas) have a forward collision warning system that can detect pedestrians and automatically brake. Not perfectly of course, but better than other cars. Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.

>Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.

What is the primary cause of increased US pedestrian deaths?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#226

Post by t_mahmood »

tlogan wrote: post #147
max_ wrote: post #35

"More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h." This is the only secret. People over speeding is what kills.

The percentage of Asian drivers is less than 1%. Maybe that’s a bigger factor than the speed limit? Apologies for the joke but I want to emphasize that there are so many variables at play here. My theory is that it is because they have better public transportation and way less cars on the road.

As an Asian driver, you're not wrong. Almost everyone drives like they have to save the world in next destinati aaon

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#227

Post by pavlov »

rozab wrote: post #201
graemep wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand the UK as a whole had a lower road traffic realted death rate than Finland did: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The UK is not that different by comparison. It is a pretty remarkable achievement though, and shows what can be done.

I would guess Finnish deaths are inflated by the rural rallying culture though, hard to compare

Yes, in rural Finland 17-year-old boys who just got their license regularly end up killing themselves and their friends by reckless driving.

I believe there is cultural issue with boys’ upbringing. Recently my 8-year-old daughter was spending a week with her mother’s relatives in middle Finland. One day she sent me a picture of an old Volvo in a ditch. “Guess what dad, my cousin drove it off the road and I was in the car!”

The cousin in question is ten years old. I was absolutely furious that they let the boy drive a real car and that my little girl was in it with no adult supervision. But my in-laws didn’t see a problem: “He was only driving on a private road — there’s no risk — everybody does it here — this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving.”

In my opinion this is how you train teenagers to think that safety and rules don’t matter, and that they’re invulnerable. But I can’t change these people’s views, so all I can do is try to make sure my daughter doesn’t ride with her cousins from now on.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#228

Post by DFHippie »

crote wrote: post #94
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #59

Earlier 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…

> You can't just put up a speed sign and hope people will magically abide by it.

Off topic, but one of the more maddening things I see here in the US is signs which say "End thus-and-such speed limit." I don't want to know what the speed limit was. I want to know what it is!

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#229

Post by everforward »

crote wrote: post #102
echelon_musk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would That depends on the total journey distance.

No, it doesn't. Those low speed limits are only used for smaller residential streets. It only impacts the part of your journey from your home to the edge of your neighbourhood, and the same at your destination. Regardless of journey distance, the vast majority of your trip will be spend driving on roads intended for through traffic - which will of course still have a higher speed limit. Percentage-wise it is only goi…

Fwiw, this is how my American neighborhood is set up and it's completely tolerable. Nobody is more than 5 or 6 blocks from a "through traffic road".

It's also got stop signs on virtually every intersection, so speeding is basically gone. A lot of people ignore speed limits, but I've never met anyone that blanket ignores stop signs on 4 way intersections. You're not getting much faster than 20mph in a single city block without making a very obvious amount of noise (at least in an ICE).

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#230

Post by shkkmo »

mattlondon wrote: post #34
thomascountz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 30 km/h limit and decline in driving means zero people have to die. If enforcing scooters meant zero people have to die, I'm not sure what the objection is, truly.

Scooters kill people too (often the drivers themselves but not always). The problem with escooters is that basically any accident is "bad" since you have no protection while you toodle along at 15.5mph. Not just slamming into the ground, but into street furniture, trees, building, bikes - you name it. A helmet (which no one wears) is not going to help you if you wrap your abdomen around a solid metal bench at 15.5mph…

> The problem with escooters is that basically any accident is "bad"

Factually false. Out of well over 1000 annual collosions in GB in 2023 there were a a handful of deaths but they were all the e-scooter riders.

> The real world has a lot of hard sticky-out bits (and perhaps ironically cars don't due to crash testing rules,

The most dangerous parts of the streets for scooters are the cars, not the other "sticky-out" bits that don't move and are pretty easy to avoid if you aren't drunk or on your phone or not looking forward. Less than a quarter of e-scooter accidents involved no other vehicle and I'd be willing to bet those tended to be less serious.

E-scooters are great because they aren't as dangerous to other people. People get to make their own choices about risk tolerance, speed and gear all while presenting less hazard to the public when they make bad choices.

> you have no protection

The protection you get in a car comes from the added mass that also makes you so much more dangerous to other road users.

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