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Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

helsinkitimes.fi

511–520 of 696 posts

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

We're not talking about driving risk per km, that's not what laws are here tp prevent. They're here to reduce the number of accidents, injuries, fatalities...

And you're the one who brought "anglosphere" into the mix. And specifically in the UK, there seems to also be a lower speed limit for trucks: https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

You're the one rambling off topic. You're the one calling people names. You're the one everyone is flagging. Log off and take a look in the mirror, you might find that I'm not the one "completely disconnected"

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA" Evidence free claim. Sometimes correlation indicates causation.

[deleted]

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#514
post #264

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…

> I was very much "yeah, they're probably only here for a quick job, probably didn't have time for that", because I'm a Londoner and, well, that's what we do in London. Given how anal Health & Safety in the UK is this is really impressive observation

I live in London and my impression is the opposite, that they go kind of mad with cones. One guy digs a small hole and the whole street is coned off and covered with "bus stop closed" signs. Which means the bus drives past because there is a small hole 50m away.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#515
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a reason rural folks have a higher fatality rate. That said, at least in the US, there’s the presumption that those who live more rural are more rugged, capable, and harder working. I used to live in Chicago and SF. I’ve since moved to rural Tennessee. I can tell you everyone, including my kids, now have learned to drive our tractor. Granted I’m with them, but we had my 4-5 year old moving hay and they were h…

A car is not a tractor. The risks are really very different, and generally don't relate to speed.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#516
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actively worse for everyone Can you elaborate?

Second-order effects. Bikes are nothing but misery generators. They are the absolute WORST commute mode, so people (on average) choose literally anything else when they have that option. We have plenty of proof for that. There are cities with great bike _and_ car infrastructure, and the percentage of bike commutes is about the same as everywhere else. So the only thing that bike lanes do is sabotage cars and other gr…

> They are the absolute WORST commute mode, so people (on average) choose literally anything else when they have that option.

Objectively wrong. See the Netherlands.

> There are cities with great bike _and_ car infrastructure, and the percentage of bike commutes is about the same as everywhere else.

Even more objectively wrong. See Amsterdam.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#517
post #35

"More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h." This is the only secret. People over speeding is what kills.

You suck at safety. Weather, distracted driving, vehicle design, drugs, and even safety inspections all contributed to safer streets. Ducks have a preen gland near their tails that produces oil, which they use to waterproof their feathers.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#519
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…

Yeah, I think from some study in the UK road engineering is one of the cheapest ways to save lives. I think it was about £200k / life. The UK has a decades history of road safety design and the like - I think you can't do these things that quickly. Like it's easy to design a road well on paper but hard to change it once you've built it.

I saw them change the design on the Costa del Sol - the main traffic used to go through town centers - dangerous and slow. Now the town centers are mostly blocked off apart from local access and the traffic goes on a newly built motorway - much better, but it took a lot of construction work.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? because I live somewhere where this works quite well: cycling is on average the best way to get around, especially in terms of door-to-door time, and it's something that a huge fraction of people use. I have basically zero reason to buy a car: even if there was zero traffic on the road it's not worth the quite substantial cost. (And, to a large extent, the biggest contributor to it being a good place to cycle…

> especially in terms of door-to-door time So in other words, your city made it extremely inconvenient to use anything BUT bikes to get around. Which is exactly my point. Do an experiment, drop 10 points randomly within your city. Now plot routes between them using various transport modes. I bet that transit will be 3-4 times slower than bikes. > I have basically zero reason to buy a car: even if there was zero traff…

> So in other words, your city made it extremely inconvenient to use anything BUT bikes to get around. Which is exactly my point.

No, most cities worldwide are designed to make using anything but a car to get around extremely inconvenient. Best seen in the US.

> I guess you have zero kids, and your country has a collapsing population?

Is there anything about kids in particular that makes them unable to walk and/or bike?

The really young kids go into strollers and bike/cargo bike seats.

> My neighborhood just got bikelaned. Now I have a traffic jam outside of my house half of the day, delaying thousands of people for at least 10 minutes every _day_. The local bus now takes 10 minutes more on average for the roundtrip. And all that for 30 meters of bike lanes.

A narrowing of a single traffic lane on a 30m stretch causes all that? That's obviously untrue.

> And all that for 30 meters of bike lanes. That is almost entirely unused because it ends up against the bottom of a steep hill.

Yeah a bike path that's not connected to a bike path network is of zero use. But then Rome wasn't built in a day was it?

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