Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving? Is that a fair characterization of your comment?
And narrow lanes make drivers more cautious.
Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
301–310 of 696 posts
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The UK is not that different by comparison. Do note that the UK is 15.6x as dense as Finland, and the climate is quite different: e.g. in Helsinki (southermost city) mean daily temperature is below freezing point 4/12 months of the year (very consequential for driving). E.g. in Scotland even the mean daily minimum does not cross freezing point in any month. OECD data has Finland at 0.36 fatalities per 10k vehicles…
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> People drive more carefully on frozen roads.
I am from the alps, with my share of knowledge about frozen roads. I would add to that: "People drive more carefully on frozen roads, *if they are not used to frozen roads and/or know roads are frozen.*"
For point one: In Austria I have seen (local) cars drive 30 km/h over the speed limit on the Autobahn while it was snowing at sub zero, with exactly the same (too close) breaking distance to others. In my experience for many people used to snow/ice the speed limit is still the orientation for many during ice/snow. If anything I'd expect the increase in defensive driving to be offset by the increase in accidents due to bad view, longer breaking distances, etc.
As for the second point: In Austria the second it snows or rainfall happens at subzero amadas of snow/ice clearing vehicles hit the road, yet during my lifetime I experienced black ice multiple times. To those who don't know what this is, it is a invisible layer of extremely smooth ice coating the road, which can happen of air + road temperatures and rainfall just align in the worst way possible. The resulting road is so slippy as if god had toggled off the "simulate friction"-checkbox. I remember a time where no-one could leave my village because they couldn't get up that one hill on foot. I managed to get to school by stomping through half a meter of snow next to the road and slipped 10 times on the way to the school while wittnessing multiple (minor) car crashes. I have seen such conditions happen on the Autobahn as well and the results are not pretty.
Zero traffic casualties in a cold climate therefore has to mean absolutely lightning fast road maintenance and/or stellar information on the current road conditions and is certainly an extremely impressive feat. I can't imagine this is possible without adaptive speed limits (and rhe infrastructure that is needed to pull that off). The Finns have reason to be proud (aside from them being really nice people in my personal experience).
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving? Is that a fair characterization of your comment?
I'm not the person you're replying to, and I have no idea what the data says about frozen roads, but it's certainly possible that two things are both true:
- There are more accidents (per active vehicle) on frozen roads
- There are fewer fatalities on frozen roads due to the lower speeds
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There's definitely a cultural difference but whether it's an issue is debatable.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#305Earlier 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?
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” outcome…
It insane to me that anyone, let alone enough people to actually make it happen, would think that was a good policy. It's bussing, but without the busses.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a few km getting out of my city to the highway as part of my commute and then quite a few kms in the city I'm commuting to. This is a pretty typical North American experience (I'm in the Greater Vancouver area). There is no realistic transit option, my 30 minute car drive would be 2 hours on transit each way. So let's say 10km (might be a bit more) in city traffic. 12 minutes of my commute each way [EDIT: impa…
Yes i don't doubt your estimates for Vancouver. European cities are built very differently (partially because of historical streets being later adapted for motor-vehicles). What i consider city driving, 50km/h or above would be probably be considered suicidal with the amount of merging, turning, and red lights. And the density is higher at that. Three lanes either way i consider a real motorway. I don't think I've se…
Here is Marine Drive in Vancouver:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ThnKn7PmD8sKSnNs5
Speed limit 50km/h ... It has lights and intersections. Almost no pedestrians.
Vancouver has many wide multi-lane streets. Some in denser areas with more pedestrian traffic some less. It has almost no real highways going to the city.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#307As Hank Green said…”no one tells you when you don’t die.” There’s several people walking around Helsinki right now who would not be had they not made safety improvements…we just don’t know who they are.
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Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#308Earlier 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.
Incorrect. Light trucks account for 54% of pedestrian fatalities compared to passenger cars at 37%. Impossible for more than half to not be considered the primary cause.
https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#309I 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…
when that crane will reach end of its life, it will be move to india for another 10-15 years of service life.
Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year
#310At 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.
Bike lanes are kinda scary in nyc though, because bikers usually refuse to stop for red lights, creating a hazard for pedestrians.
I once saw a biker yell at a pedestrian to get out of the way, even though she was the one who was going through a red light.
More than once I've seen a biker almost plow into someone trying to cross the street.