Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

helsinkitimes.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 696 posts

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#581

Post by projektfu »

dyauspitr wrote: post #56
tommoor wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers are actually calm in Helsinki, not constantly honking and slowly rolling into you in the pedestrian crossing either.

I rarely hear anyone in the US honking outside of maybe the downtown of really big cities like NYC.

In Atlanta you get honked at for merely not breaking the rules like the person behind you thinks you should. For example, not taking a right turn on red where the sign says "No Turn on Red", or not pulling out into oncoming traffic because the person behind would be crazy enough to do it.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#582

Post by dilyevsky »

crote wrote: post #474
dilyevsky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is Finnish absolutely draconian fines that scale up with income and really really strict enforcement. Make fines start with $500 and go to thousands and actually enforce them and not what SF is doing and we'll have the same but people over here don't like to hear it...

How are the fines "draconian"? Everyone is fined the same when measured in time . If someone making minimum wage ($7/hour) gets a 30 year sentence for murder, should Jeff Bezos ($1,000,000/hour) be able to get out of jail for the same offense after only 110 minutes? If recklessly speeding costs the same as a cup of coffee, how is the fine supposed to act as a deterrent?

Arguing semantics here. Over here they fine you very little to relative average income. The fines in sf are exactly same as in the middle of nowhere because they are mostly set at state level

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#583

Post by dilyevsky »

rwyinuse wrote: post #399
dilyevsky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is Finnish absolutely draconian fines that scale up with income and really really strict enforcement. Make fines start with $500 and go to thousands and actually enforce them and not what SF is doing and we'll have the same but people over here don't like to hear it...

I'm not sure about the enforcement part. In Finland we have one of the lowest amounts of policemen per capita, traffic police seriously lacks resources. Moderate speeding is pretty common due to that, despite the fines. Maybe it's better in Helsinki than other cities or the countryside, I don't know. I regularly drive about 300km trips without seeing a single police car, only one static traffic camera on the way.

I’ve driven my fair share of kms around Finland and trust me - it’s way more strict than here even though we probably have much higher traffic cops per capita number on paper

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#584

Post by throwawaye2456 »

tim333 wrote: post #519
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…

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 t…

> Now the town centers are mostly blocked off apart from local access and the traffic goes on a newly built motorway

It's impressive that they managed that. In my country, that solution would probably not work politically because merchants in the town would be afraid to lose business due to less car traffic.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#585

Post by [deleted] »

tsimionescu wrote: post #562
repeekad wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not basic safety, if you walk into a crane not in use that’s on you not the contractors. It’s paternalism, not safety, and the American in me groans at the idea of at midnight the cops showing up and causing a ruckus over that. A big hole you might fall into, yeah you need some cones

This is not about walking into the crane, it's about cones on the road to ensure that pedestrians can safely walk around the crane onto the road without walking into traffic. Basically, the crane operators, if they're going to take up the whole sidewalk, have to ensure that pedestrians have a safe way to pass around them, and that means they have to work to close a part of the road and mark that.

[deleted]

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#586

Post by projektfu »

j1elo wrote: post #427

I wanted to read opinions about the cost in time that public transport takes, but it hasn't been commented much. Time is precious (albeit not more than a life! that I agree for sure), and you cannot save it for later, so the problem I have with public transport is the enormous loss of time it is for everyone -- unless the planning is almost flawless. So first we had distances effectively "shortened" with the rise of…

Time is precious, so I would rather spend it reading a good book or playing with my daughter on the train for an hour, than driving my car for 45 minutes.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#587

Post by ane »

knolan wrote: post #453

Meanwhile here in Ireland the culture is going the opposite direction. There is a clear lack of roads policing here and a recent report has confirmed this[1] with many Gardai simply not interested in doing their job. Our police force is massively under resourced and moral is in the gutter. Meanwhile we have endless PR events “pleading” and “urging” motorists to drive safely, many of which have photo ops with vehicles…

Never been more scared in my life when I drove through narrow country roads in Ireland

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#589

Post by NicuCalcea »

bapak wrote: post #294
Tiktaalik wrote: post #22

Don't let anyone tell you that better things aren't possible

Are you suggesting that facts are useful in public debate? Everyone has an agenda and they will follow it regardless of what you show them.

That's why nothing has ever changed in the history of humanity, because we're born with an agenda and never change it.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#590

Post by Aurornis »

muzani wrote: post #545
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…

Where I live, gig riders will run red lights because it ends up increasing their pay for the day by about 30%. They're not being 'exploited' into starvation level pay; some make twice the salary of a factory worker. The ones working 13 hrs/day make the equivalent of a marketing director or bank manager. Most of the accidents I've been in have been people rushing to work or rushing to pick up relatives from the airpor…

You don’t even need a financial incentive for people to start normalizing traffic violations.

Once enough people start doing something and it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that nobody is getting cited for it, the behavior spreads.

I remember traveling to a European country where drivers were angrily honking their horns at me for stopping at red lights (with no cross traffic) and stop signs.

After one close call where I was nearly rear ended because I came to a stop, I started running the stop signs (with a slow down) too.

Back home in my US city there’s a road near my house where the average speed creeps up over the course of a year until it gets so bad that a handful of drivers feel emboldened to go 30mph over the speed limit and weave through traffic.

Then the police will come out and make a show of pulling people over randomly for a few months and the behavior resets closer to the speed limit.

It really only takes 1 in 100 bad drivers believing they won’t be pulled over to make a road much more dangerous.

Post reply on HN