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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

#491

Post by Mawr »

graemep wrote: post #455
IshKebab wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

My problem with the 20mph speed limits in the UK is that they seem to be imposed fairly randomly. There are many cases where wide roads with good visibility and few pedestrians crossing have 20mph limits. In one egregious case I experienced recently near identical stretches of the same road (it was a main road, I think an A road, passing through a built up area) switched between 20 and 30 mph limits. If anything it c…

> There are many cases where wide roads with good visibility and few pedestrians crossing have 20mph limits.

> My road has a 20mph limit. On the bit I live on it makes no difference - narrower, parked cars etc. means you drive very slow anyway.

Make up your mind ;)

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#492

Post by gmac »

IshKebab wrote: post #418
squidgyhead wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Speed, of course, affects not just how many accidents there are but also how bad they are. A key argument for 20mph is that collisions with pedestrians at this speed are mostly survivable. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmtl...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#493

Post by Mawr »

throwaway9832 wrote: post #426
wafflemaker wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 km\h limit in densely populated and heavily used by pedestrians first\last 2-5 minutes of your travel does what? Extends your travel time by 1 minute? At the same time making it nearly impossible to kill a kid, cat, dog or human in these places. Same goes with the right of way in these places. You're in a car, you're getting where you're going much faster anyway, so you let pedestrians go first. On pedestrian cros…

You, just like the grandparent, confuse egregious 0% tolerance speed enforcement with speed limits. Speed limits dictates stopping distance and is a key factor in collision avoidance. No one is asking to abolish speed limits. The problem is when passenger cars that require a fraction of stopping distance of a truck at given speed limit are fined for going 3-4 km over limit. Essentially, fined for driving at a speed w…

> cars that require a fraction of stopping distance of a truck at given speed

You may want to update your knowledge on the stopping distances of modern trucks.

> are fined for going 3-4 km over limit

Obviously. Is there anything confusing about the word "limit" in particular that you don't understand?

> Essentially, fined for driving at a speed where they can stop many meters before a truck going the sign posted limit.

It is not your job as a driver to decide whether to stick to a particular traffic rule or not. The limit is there, so follow it.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#494

Post by Mawr »

bluescrn wrote: post #448
macguillicuddy wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything in the parent comments referencing or advocating for 0% tolerance speed enforcement. In the UK speed limits are typically enforced with a 10% grace factor.

Instead, there's a push to reduce limits ever closer to zero. 30mph was close to the sweet spot and had been for decades. Or it would have been with a reasonable level of enforcement. But as the ideological and/or climate-driven war on cars ramped up there's been a big push to reduce ever-more areas to 20mph, which is just too slow, especially when deployed widely/indiscriminately as it has been in Wales. (Used very…

> 30mph was close to the sweet spot and had been for decades.

For car drivers maybe. From the POV of a pedestrian, 30 mph is very fast.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#496

Post by Mawr »

throwaway9832 wrote: post #429
franga2000 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were replying to a comment saying "studies have shown lower speed limits reduce accidents" with something along the lines of "but who cares if I go 10 over the limit, trucks have more mass and are more dangerous at the same speed". I can't even see your original comment since it was flagged, presumably for being total nonsense. This is not one vs the other, multiple things can be true. Trucks are individually mor…

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…

> 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.

You can accomplish that equally easily by sticking to 100 km/h.

What is it with the word "limit" that is so hard to understand? It's not the suggested speed, nor the target speed, nor the minimum speed. It's the maximum speed.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#497

Post by Saline9515 »

ath3nd wrote: post #478
Saline9515 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the city. In Paris, I saw crackheads shooting next to me, people defecating in the train, licking the handle bars (true!), and so on, so yeah...Paris subway is great in theory, in practice, at 8AM, it's war, but smellier. And the air pollution in the French subway is much worse than what you have outside. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143846392... I suspect that most of the b…

> I suspect that most of the bike drivers are affluent service workers who can't be arsed to share the public transport with the plebs. Fairly often they are postal or delivery workers. Are those the affluent service workers that we keep hearing about?

My comment was not about those people, who are minimum-wage temp workers and a tiny minority compared to the mass of cyclists in Paris.

In the case of Helsinki, they don't have a particularly outstanding biking infrastructure, but they have stellar public transports. And clean, very clean. I'd choose that everyday, which is much more inclusive and far less dangerous for everyone. Especially in a aging society.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#498

Post by jon-wood »

globular-toast wrote: post #374
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.

That's because in the UK people just don't walk, except in certain places. You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example. But in other places people just won't walk there. One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.

I can only assume you’re either not in the UK yourself, or you’re one of those people who thinks that because they drive even the shortest distances everyone else does. I walk daily, anything from down the road to a shop to right across town, most of the roads are set up to deal with that and have decent crossings so I don’t get mowed down by a car.

The suggestion that people don’t walk in London is hilarious to me, have you never seen a central London street as people leave work? You can barely move for pedestrians.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#499

Post by globular-toast »

occz wrote: post #391
globular-toast wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because in the UK people just don't walk, except in certain places. You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example. But in other places people just won't walk there. One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.

>One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars. A patently absurd claim that holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever. The whole nation of the U.S disproves it, for one.

We have far better roads, vehicle testing and driver training than the US.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#500

Post by jijijijij »

kqr wrote: post #380

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…

Voter demographics, car lobbyism and/or corruption.

Eg. in Germany we’re held hostage by pensioners, who have cars as part of their identity and their pensions swallowing major parts of the state’s tax income. The car industry would be really unhappy, if the "joy to ride" was diminished by any amount, so politicians sing their song. Traffic won’t be slowed, bike infrastructure won’t be built, shit‘s not gonna get fixed.

I presume politics isn’t as lucrative in Finland and everything is smaller, fewer cooks.

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