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Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

helsinkitimes.fi

321–330 of 696 posts

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Scooters shouldn't feel the need to drive on sidewalks when the speed limit is 30km/h

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#322

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…

In America they would call that a Karen. Our society is doing anything it can to drop into total chaos by 2030.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going 50km/h between red lights doesn’t actually make your trip faster Except when it does, due to horrible traffic engineering practices. There were a pair of one-way streets in the downtown of my city. Both attempted to have "green wave" setups for the lights. One worked pretty well, the other was okay, but whatever. The problem was that the road itself was signed at 30 mph, but the lights were timed at 40 mph. I…

I saw the reverse once. Some town in the (US) Midwest when I was a kid. Downtown had signs that said "The traffic lights are synced for 25 MPH". It wasn't a speed limit, just a statement. When you figured out that they were telling the truth, you started driving 25.

That would be sensible.

If I'm being very charitable, I would say you might naively set this up so that the next light's stopped traffic clears just before the previous light's traffic arrives, and perhaps that's how it worked during the day (I was a teen, I didn't go downtown during business hours much). After 5, it just encouraged you to punch it to make them all in one go.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#324
post #119

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?

That's not how it works. It's a 30km/h speed limit for one kilometer in your local neighbourhood until you hit the first through road, then it'll be 50km/h / 60km/h / 80 km/h / 120 km/h as usual, and another one kilometer at 30 km/h at your destination. In other words, it's 2km at 30km/h plus 48km at 80km/h, versus 2km at 50km/h plus 48km at 80km/h. That's a difference of 1 minute 36 seconds.

2017 Helsinki speed map for reference: https://www.hel.fi/hel2/ksv/Aineistot/Liikennesuunnittelu/Au...

(in support of the above thesis)

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#326
In Oslo we seem to have a problem with trucks. Just in the past year, two people have been run over and killed by trucks. One was where the truck driver was reversing and another where the truck driver did an illegal right turn over a pavement.

Recently there has been a case in the courts where a truck driver didn’t yield to a cyclist and killed her. The narrative from the national truck association was basically that the cyclist was at fault. Even the courts were in on it, only when it got to the highest court did it seem that anyone was willing to blame the truck driver.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Speed enforcement has been extensively studied, and there are a lot of publicly available articles on the subject. The results are basically universally in favour of speed enforcement reducing motor vehicle collisions, reducing injury and cost.

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Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#328
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving? Is that a fair characterization of your comment?

Yes, that is a pretty fair characterization. The reasons is because most accidents happens due to inattention and over confidence, hazardous roads makes people pay more attention. A distracted person is more dangerous than a drunkard on the road.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 is plenty old enough to drive under supervision. We used to send people to war at 16. The idea of stopping people from driving until 18 is infantilisation.

I can definitely see why you’re using a throwaway account.

[flagged]

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 is plenty old enough to drive under supervision. We used to send people to war at 16. The idea of stopping people from driving until 18 is infantilisation.

We also used to send children to work in the mines. That does not make it a good idea.

For children working in the mines the choice was not between working or chilling in the mall. It was work or imminent death from starvation. So, yes, it was a good idea to work. It still is in less prosperous parts of the world.
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