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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

#241

Post by dataflow »

Muromec wrote: post #194
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.

>You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all? We don't even ban drugs here and cars are more useful than drugs. It's all about harm reduction and diminishing returns. Also, autoluwe (but not autovrije) districts exist and are a selling point when buying/renting a house, so your attempt at a strawman is rather amusing.

Of course it's about harm reduction and diminishing returns. I have nothing against what Helsinki did. I was solely replying to that specific comment. Because it was an awful counterargument to an argument that I had explicitly noted I was not agreeing with in the first place.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#242

Post by cyberax »

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.

> 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.

BTW, what do you think about the 5-10 extra lifetimes that people in NYC collectively waste _every_ _day_ in commute compared to smaller cities?

A well-designed car-oriented city will have commutes of around 20 minutes, compared to 35-minute average commutes in NYC. So that's 30 minutes that NYC residents waste every day on average. That's one lifetime for about 1.2 million people commuting every day.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#243

Post by rjsw »

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

TBF, that happens in the UK as well.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#244

Post by AnthonyMouse »

perching_aix wrote: post #237
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

Here's a quote from your link:

> Arguments of this form may or may not be fallacious depending on the probabilities involved in each step.

In other words, it depends on the premises being correct. But all arguments depend on their premises being correct.

The fact that something is widely parroted doesn't mean it's correct -- that's just this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#245

Post by WillPostForFood »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #236
tlogan wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

The way SFUSD placed kids, after checking whether they have siblings, or pre-K attendance, is:

Test Score Area (CTIP1) Students who live in areas of the city with the lowest average test scores.

Which will tend to fill good schools in good areas from kids in areas with bad schools. After that they look at proximity, but most or all spaces will have been filled.

Attendance Area Elementary school students who live in the attendance area of the elementary school requested

It effectively means a lot of neighborhood swapping, and driving kids to schools.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210204205328/https://www.sfusd...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#247

Post by perching_aix »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #244
perching_aix wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Here's a quote from your link: > Arguments of this form may or may not be fallacious depending on the probabilities involved in each step. In other words, it depends on the premises being correct. But all arguments depend on their premises being correct. The fact that something is widely parroted doesn't mean it's correct -- that's just this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

> The fact that something is widely parroted doesn't mean it's correct

Argumentum ad populum [0] is itself an informal fallacy, as described on both of our links. What I said wasn't an argumentum ad populum anyways: we're discussing definitions, and definitions do not have truth values.

> But all arguments depend on their premises being correct

But not all incorrect premises are formulated in a reasonable manner. There are degenerate premises that have telltale signs of being misguided. These would be what make informal fallacies. In a way, you could think of them as being incorrect about the premises of what counts as sound logic.

In fact, I ran into this the other day here when while someone said something potentially true, they were also engaging in a No True Scotsman fallacy (also an informal fallacy). One of them claimed that "if it's a fallacy, it's nonsensical to call it true" - except no, that's not the point. The statement can absolutely be true in that case, it's the reasoning that didn't make sense in context. Context they were happy to deny of course, because they were not there to make people's days any better.

Similar here: the slippery slope can be true and real, it's just fallacious to default to it. Conversely [0], it is absolutely possible that people all think the same thing, are actually right, and some other thing becomes true because of it, just super uncommon, so it is fallacious to invert it.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#248

Post by tlogan »

derektank wrote: post #224
pantalaimon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The key of the new proposal is how they are going to define zones (neighbourhoods). Knowing the politics in SF, I think they will probably say that zone is 7-miles radius (and SF is 49 square miles).

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#249

Post by throwaway998772 »

connicpu wrote: post #57
Nurbek-F wrote: post #21

Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...

Great, scooters are much less likely to kill pedestrians during collisions. I'm glad more people who didn't actually need 2 ton metal boxes are downsizing to something more practical.

Great, now I'll have the 0.02% chance of surviving a collision with a scooter that slaloms on any possible walkable terrain, instead of a 0.01% chance of surviving a collision with a car that won't hit me because they don't drive on sidewalks.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#250

Post by paavope »

t-3 wrote: post #71
Nurbek-F wrote: post #21

Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...

I somewhat doubt that scooters are a significant portion of traffic, given that the Finnish warm season is very short. Maybe Finns drive more carefully, drive less, and take alternative transport more often to avoid the ice and snow of half the year?

Based on my experience living here in Helsinki for 30 years, people drive cars _more_ in the winter rather than less. That’s because the alternative is usually some combination of walking and public transit, and walking is uncomfortable in the winter and public transit is a bit less dependable, too.

But altogether people mostly still use public transit, there’s not a whole lot of driving per capita and the traffic is relatively slow and non-chaotic. I think that’s the core reason for the road safety.

Also, the requirements for getting a driver’s license here are stricter than it sounds like in other countries, with a high emphasis on safety; that probably contributes to the non-chaotic traffic

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