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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

#531

Post by jon-wood »

globular-toast wrote: post #502
jon-wood wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I walk everywhere. I've walked across large portions of the country (literally weeks of walking at a time). London is one of the "certain places", as are other inner cities. Outer cities and the countryside are owned by cars. People aren't getting hurt because they only walk in designated areas. Cars are basically required in other places. Just a few weirdos like me walking and cycling.

I’ll accept there are some country roads that I wouldn’t want my 11 year old son walking on his own, but I live in an outer city and it’s fine, even quite pleasant with the number of parks and cut throughs you can walk down.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#532

Post by Mawr »

Saline9515 wrote: post #207
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most scooter and bike deaths are from being ran over by a car going too fast for the zone. If you take that into the equation of the car (instead of the scooter or bike); then you probably only have heart attacks from warm weather left as a mortality cause for the bike. So no, even per mile driven, cars kill people and bikes pretty much don't. And you should take the buss or train everywhere if you follow that logic…

This is not exactly true. First, many (most?) cyclists do not respect basic road safety rules, such as signaling when you turn, or respecting red lights. Let's not talk about safety behavior, such wearing a helmet or repressing the urge to listen music while riding a bike (I know, crazy, right?). In France, each dataset shows consistently that accidents are very often caused by cyclists. 35% of the deadly accidents i…

> First, many (most?) cyclists do not respect basic road safety rules

Wonderful, and the least safety conscious cyclist in the world is still largely only a danger to himself.

> In France, each dataset shows consistently that accidents are very often caused by cyclists. 35% of the deadly accidents involving another road user were caused by cyclists

So including accidents in which the cyclists themselves died then?

> and if you consider serious accidents, in 2/3rd of the cases, no cars were involved.

So who was involved? Don't keep us hanging.

> Many deadly accidents are also caused by...a stroke (22% of the deaths), especially for older cyclists.

Yeah, cycling accident stats tend to be dominated by the >50 y/o age cohorts, painting a very misleading picture.

From your [1] source:

"Age seems to be a significant risk factor: 64% of cyclists killed on their bikes were over 55 years old."

> Hence, when accounting for minutes spend on the road, bikes are by far the most dangerous

Minutes spend on the road amongst cars? Sure. Not surprising to anyone.

From your [1] source:

"Even more surprising, deaths occur most of the time under normal conditions: 77% in broad daylight, 69% outside any intersection, 87% on dry roads. Figures corroborated by recent fatal accidents reported in the regional press: they resulted from a rear-end collision, when overtaking where the motorist had not respected the safety distance. "

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#533

Post by rwyinuse »

mmasu wrote: post #470
rwyinuse wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

is it also possible that one of the side effects of this are that people driving recreationally become sometimes exceptionally good at it? see how many great f1/rally pilots Finland has generated. Clearly not good when this happens while drunk tho

Yes, I think it's definitely a factor. Recreational driving is a favorite past-time in the countryside, and due to the forest industry there are lots of dirt roads which are perfect for rally driving, many purpose-built race tracks around the country as well. So the barrier of entry is probably lower than in most places. It's also not too uncommon for kids whose parents own / have access to some land to have some old, unregistered car to practice with away from public roads.

There is even a popular racing class called "jokamiehenluokka", where drivers are obliged to sell their cars for 2000 euros if somebody makes an offer. That rule is designed to keep the barrier of entry low, as drivers don't have the incentive to invest too much into their car. Apparently you can take the exam tojoin at age of 15, which is 3 years before the normal minimum age for driving license.

I recommend the game "My Summer Car" for those interested in all this culture.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#534

Post by dpe82 »

mgfist wrote: post #530
PaulRobinson wrote: post #113

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…

> When you do that, you get the benefits. It also gets very very expensive (maybe not in this case specifically). For example in NYC buildings often just leave scaffolding up permanently because it's cheaper to do that than to assemble/disassemble between every job they have to do. I think it's not even clear if scaffolding is that much safer as there have been a number of accidents with the scaffoldings themselves c…

My understanding is it's even dumber than that: NYC sensibly requires building owners to repair failing brick facades, but allows them to put up scaffolding indefinitely until they do. It turns out just leaving up the scaffolding and never performing the repair is often cheaper.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#535

Post by erikerikson »

lettergram wrote: post #300
pavlov wrote: 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…

> those who live more rural are more rugged, capable, and harder working.

As someone who grew up rural and still has roots but moved to the city for work, this holds with a high probability.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#536

Post by bluedino »

pavlov wrote: post #227
rozab wrote: post #201

Earlier 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…

The urban America equivalent are teenage to twenty something males crashing Dodge Chargers at high speeds at 2:00am

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#537

Post by Saline9515 »

Mawr wrote: post #532
Saline9515 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not exactly true. First, many (most?) cyclists do not respect basic road safety rules, such as signaling when you turn, or respecting red lights. Let's not talk about safety behavior, such wearing a helmet or repressing the urge to listen music while riding a bike (I know, crazy, right?). In France, each dataset shows consistently that accidents are very often caused by cyclists. 35% of the deadly accidents i…

> First, many (most?) cyclists do not respect basic road safety rules Wonderful, and the least safety conscious cyclist in the world is still largely only a danger to himself. > In France, each dataset shows consistently that accidents are very often caused by cyclists. 35% of the deadly accidents involving another road user were caused by cyclists So including accidents in which the cyclists themselves died then? >…

I was answering to the parent who said that cycling accidents/deaths were caused by cars. As it happens, in the case of death, it's true, even though only for 2/3rds of the deaths, so not an overwhelming majority. And regarding "serious accidents" which are much more common and nonetheless very problematic, it's mostly false as most of the cycling accidents don't involve another car.

Besides, a cyclist passing at a red light can hit a pedestrian. I know those are the last of your concerns as a cyclist, my wife got hit at a crosswalk in Paris by one, who didn't respect the red light.

Or, by the way, a car can create an accident while trying to avoid the cyclist. Honestly, saying "dangerous cycling behavior is only dangerous for us" and "accidents and deaths are caused by cars" is quite comical and representative of the self-centered mindset of many cyclists.

Also, half of the cycling accidents with cars involve a professional vehicle/public transportation. But I'm sure that in your biking utopia, we'll have tomorrow cargo bikes delivering to Costco and and material to public works!

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#538

Post by erikerikson »

Hilift wrote: post #472
lionkor wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Things seem to be improving in Seattle:

https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/VisionZer...

Implementation continues to roll out but a lot of the changes are long term and need behavioral shifts in the population that take a while to normalize.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#539

Post by teiferer »

rwyinuse wrote: post #404
sophia01 wrote: post #220

Earlier 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…

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…

A major reason for the substantial difference in life expectancy at birth between the genders. It becomes more even above 30-40.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#540

Post by teiferer »

pavlov wrote: post #227
rozab wrote: post #201

Earlier 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…

> this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving.

Because that Y chromosome makes all the difference. /s

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