261–270 of 696 posts
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If people actually stick to those speed limits.
Yeah, needs to be in the design instead of a dumb sign
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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…
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Looking both ways is undone if drivers are speeding, not bothering to stop at stop signs and being generally unpredictable and dangerous. Blaming pedestrians for getting run over by speeders that are too impatient to drive at safe speeds in residential areas is a ludicrous opinion to take.
Pedestrians have far better visibility and can stop or change directions far more quickly than the slowest car.
I 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…
Given how anal Health & Safety in the UK is this is really impressive observation
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And those with that intention are authoritarians that need to be kept out of government.
Authoritarian has a definition, it's not just "people who make laws that keep me from doing what I want." People in the USA still complain in the same way today about laws mandating seat belt usage, but it's still not authoritarian. It's a net positive for the wearer and everyone around them, and it's incredibly childish to push back on something for no other reason than because someone is telling you to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_road_de...
In the EU, Germany infamously has roads with no speed limits, but its traffic fatality rate isn't high either.
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> Make it hard for people to have families and society will collapse I used to live in Amsterdam which has a great public transport, great cycling paths, and limits of 30km/h. People are going cycling to school, on dates, and picnic with their families. Associating having a 3 ton gas guzzler as a prerequisite of having a family and a roadblock of "society" is only a question of poor imagination. https://www.yahoo.com…
Some areas such as Amsterdam though are just naturally more ammenable to walking, cycling, and transit. Cycling in 90+ (F) temperatures with high humidity (very common in the summer in the US midwest or south), or even just walking very far or waiting very long for a bus is pretty miserable. I'd arrive at my destination literally dripping with sweat and really unpresentable.
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> 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…
Which, it should be noted, has not at all solved the problem. Shockingly.
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It may feel like you aren’t going very fast, but at the end of the day you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would and when applied at scale this could potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives a year depending on how widely this is adopted. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands, but I don’t know the numbers well enough to make a claim that high, seem…
> you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would That depends on the total journey distance.
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.
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I rarely hear anyone in the US honking outside of maybe the downtown of really big cities like NYC.
NYC has really cracked down on excessive honking. It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Shouting and middle fingers are still common.