Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year • Hacker News Board

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#231

Post by DFHippie » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #60

dyauspitr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely hear anyone in the US honking outside of maybe the downtown of really big cities like NYC.

The world differs greatly when it comes to socially acceptable (or even legal) honking. In Sweden barely anyone honks unless to avoid serious accidents. In Spain, there is some honking, even when you just mildly inconvenience someone. In Peru, honking is a way of life/driving, and to communicate with other drivers, even when you just pass someone normally.

When I was in Thailand, people honked at pedestrians to let them know they were passing them. Not angry honks, just toots. Different culture. It left a lot of confused tourists.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#232

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #104

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier 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.

> See, the real problem is that people cover too much distances daily.

Which is why most of this is really a housing problem. If you make it too difficult to add new housing in and around cities, people have to live farther away, and in turn show up to the city in cars.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#233

Post by dataflow » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #162

dataflow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent here; I'm just saying your rebuttal is a strawman.

Well Helsinki achieved their goal (zero fatalities) without banning cars, so that argument doesn't really work. And I count myself among those who would not have believed it possible. Of course in general you can avoid potential bad consequences of a thing by not doing the thing but that's just a tautology.

To be clear, what Helsinki achieved is awesome, and I'm not suggesting the outcome was obvious. But that is completely beside the point being discussed here. I was making a rebuttal to a very specific comment and that was it. If the point was not obvious with an outright ban as an example, pretend it said reduce to 10 km/h or something.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#234

Post by tlogan » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

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?

Essentially, this was the cheapest solution for our “limousine liberals” to address the problem of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco’s public schools. The idea was simple: since schools in areas like Hunter’s Point struggle, while those in neighborhoods like the Sunset perform well, the district decided to send students from Hunter’s Point to Sunset schools, and vice versa in order to “balance” outcomes.

But in practice, it backfired. Most families in the Sunset opted out: either by enrolling their children in private schools or moving out of city. The policy didn’t create meaningful integration; it just hollowed out neighborhood public schools and made traffic worse.

A striking example: St. Ignatius Catholic school located on Sunset Boulevard is now undergoing a $200 million campus expansion, while SFUSD is closing public schools due to declining enrollment.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#235

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

mzmzmzm wrote: post #80

At the same time NYC and Toronto, we are removing protected bike lanes. In North America the acceptable amount of lives per year to sacrifice for a little convenience for drivers is above zero, and apparently rising.

I think the bigger scandal in NYC isn't the removal (it was a single lane removed as part of a 15+ year back-and-forth beef), but the fact that the city isn't even close to meeting its legal obligations around constructing new lanes[1].

(That's not to say that the removal isn't shameful and nakedly for hizzoner's political gain; I just think it's not the "big" thing.)

[1]: https://projects.transalt.org/bikelanes

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#236

Post by TimorousBestie » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:25 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #221

TimorousBestie wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Okay, I can find this board policy. However, I still can’t square your account with theirs, see https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-poli...

> Students applying for a SFUSD schools submit a preferred or ranked list of choices. If there are no space limitations, students are assigned to their highest ranked choice.

and also:

> Due to space limitations, not all students will be assigned to one of their choices. Those students will be assigned to a school with available seats closest to the student’s home.

So it seems like proximity does play a role?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#237

Post by perching_aix » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #219

perching_aix wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's possible in some cases that the conclusion is weak Not only weak, but completely void, which is why it is an informal fallacy, and thus a fallacy, if I understand it right. You're correct that it's not a logical fallacy specifically, and I do see in retrospect that that was the point of contention (in literal terms anyways). But I'm really not sure that it really was in literal terms you guys were talking, rea…

> Not only weak, but completely void, which is why it is an informal fallacy, and thus a fallacy In those cases the premises wouldn't even be satisfied. It's like saying that "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal" is a fallacy because you're disputing that Socrates is a man rather than a fictional character in Plato's writings. That doesn't make the argument a fallacy, it makes the prem…

You'll need to take this up with the entire field of philosophy, because in literature informal fallacies are absolutely an existing and distinct class of fallacies, with the slippery slope argument being cited among them: https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#H2

It's not just a Wikipedia thing or me wordsmithing it into existence. As far as I'm concerned though, arguments the premises of which are not reasonable to think they apply / are complete, or are not meaningfully possible to evaluate, are decidedly fallacious - even if they're logically sound.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#238

Post by senorrib » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:28 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #124

Maybe 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…

Interesting how you provided a counter example for the “Scandinavian genious” hypothesis and all comments are simply deflecting that and restating unrelated stats.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#239

Post by aidenn0 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:31 PM UTC

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.

They lowered the speed limit by 5mph (8 km/h) throughout the entire town I live near. As far as I can tell, it just means that people now drive 15mph over the speed limit when they previously were driving 10mph over.

The last fatality on the major road closest to my house involved someone driving over 60mph in a 45 zone.

There was also a near-miss of a pedestrian on the sidewalk when a driver going over 100mph lost control of their vehicle. That driver still has a license.

I don't think lowering the speed limit to 40 (as they recently did) would have prevented that.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#240

Post by enaaem » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 10:33 PM UTC

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.

They did the same thing in Amsterdam. There were a lot complaints at the beginning, but the city became much nicer in the end. Immediate improvement was the reduction of noise. Studies have shown that there was only a 5% increase of travel time. For example, that would be 1 minute on a 20 minute trip. That is because the largest determinant of average speed are the intersections and not the maximum speed limit.