481–490 of 696 posts
Public transit was simple and quick, even with tram lines closed for construction. The whole experiece shows what's possible when you make public transit actually usable. I'd love to live in a city that does this.
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> 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…
Yet most deadly months for traffic in Finland are summer months, when more people are driving, drinking alcohol and having a lot of free time. At least in the countryside a stereotypical summer month death is one where bunch of young men go to a party with their old BMW or Merc, and then drive back in middle of the night at a crazy speed and hit a tree. Bonus points for the driver being drunk/on drugs and nobody wear…
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I reply because "studies have show that claims of studies have show are often false". There is absolutely zero chance any respectable study would support that focusing on maintaining exactly 110 km in a 110km is safer than allowing a 10% buffer (going 10km over) so you can focus on the road and spend more of your attention on spatial awareness than staring at the odometer. Second, it is not about "who cares", it is a…
Nobody claimed any study found that zero percent speed tolerance is beneficial. They said speed limits in general. You're arguing against something nobody ever said. And no, it's not strictly "if a truck can safely do X then a car can do X+Y. It's not just about physics. There are more cars than trucks, so speed limits matter more for cars. A truck getting into a crash is worse, but less likely. Trucks also already h…
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What more action could be taken on it?
You could create a dashboard. Most of the problem is human behavior. Look at the US, 40k annual fatalities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... Many US states, counties, and municipalities have a formal "Vision Zero" program. It unfortunately hasn't resulted in much improvement in the US. Some think the pandemic had an effect. https://zerodeathsmd.gov/resources/crashdata/crashdashboard/ ht…
Human behavior as a focal point of blame is skewered in a book that just came out.
https://a.co/d/21guqjp argues that traffic engineering and design is what has resulted in the much higher death rate in the US than its peer countries. If lanes are wide (3.5m or larger), people will drive as fast as is enforced.
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Here for example is a map of Amsterdam (click on Wegcategorie en snelheid). Inside the block it's 15 km/h, on blue roads are 30, red roads are 50. The map doesn't color-code the highways, as they don't belong to municipality, but they are 100. https://maps.amsterdam.nl/30km/ It's like that since last December and was somewhat controversial when introduced (expanded), because muh freedoms, but not the kind of enduring…
That map seems like the thing not to do. They have one section of the city where nearly the whole thing is blue and another section where nearly the whole thing is red, whereas what you would presumably want is to make every other road the alternate speed so that cars can prefer the faster roads and pedestrians can prefer the slower roads, thereby not just lowering speeds near pedestrians but also separating most of…
The separating part is already done, so what you see is lowering the speed from 50 tp 30 even on the roads where the cars were funnelef into.
This is one of the things I find difficult about travelling abroad, particularly with children. I'm used to incredibly high safety standards, and when I'm in traffic in many other places in the world it feels like going back a few decades. Genuine question: we have a lot of research on how not to die in traffic (lower speeds around pedestrians, bicyclists stopped ahead of cars in intersections, children in backward f…
Tangential: I'd love to vote for a political party whose only thing is to copy stuff that works in other neighbor countries. Everyone wants to reinvent the wheel or is too proud or something, idk.
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> The results are basically universally in favour of speed enforcement reducing motor vehicle collisions, reducing injury and cost. Yeah this argument comes up a lot in the UK from people advocating 20mph speed limits everywhere. It's a super dumb argument though. Obviously increasing speed is never going to decrease danger. But if "slower is safer" is the only argument for 20mph then the logical conclusion is 0mph.…
It is very hard to think clearly about driving too fast given both how much fun it is and the monumental amounts of money that the car industry has pumped over decades into promoting their empty road, drive fast without consequences propaganda within our societies. However, as with tobacco, the evidence cannot be papered over forever and there are many studies that indicate they are a bad idea (tm) in urban environme…
> To my mind, 15 - 20mph in urban areas is that compromise.
This is precisely my point. None of the "slower is safer" people even acknowledge that it is a compromise. Their entire argument is "slower is safer" which does lead to 0mph.
It's impossible to have a proper debate if some people are saying "I know slower is safer but I don't want to go at 20mph everywhere" and others are saying "but... it's safer!"
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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.
> The results are basically universally in favour of speed enforcement reducing motor vehicle collisions, reducing injury and cost. Yeah this argument comes up a lot in the UK from people advocating 20mph speed limits everywhere. It's a super dumb argument though. Obviously increasing speed is never going to decrease danger. But if "slower is safer" is the only argument for 20mph then the logical conclusion is 0mph.…
Hilariously wrong. Kinetic energy is equal to mass times velocity squared divided by half. That squaring of velocity kills your argument.
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> The results are basically universally in favour of speed enforcement reducing motor vehicle collisions, reducing injury and cost. Yeah this argument comes up a lot in the UK from people advocating 20mph speed limits everywhere. It's a super dumb argument though. Obviously increasing speed is never going to decrease danger. But if "slower is safer" is the only argument for 20mph then the logical conclusion is 0mph.…
20-to-30 causes a step change in pedestrian outcomes, so no, the logical conclusion isn't 0mph. Also the average speed on 30mph roads before the changeover was around 20mph. It improves traffic flow and reduces pollution too. My only objection is that it's been applied in a somewhat blind way. Long sections of road with no houses and no reported accidents should probably be 30, or even 40mph.
Yes it is. If the only thing you consider is safety then 0mph is the safest. That's unarguable.
The point is that you can't only consider safety. There are other factors, but they are often deliberately ignored.