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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

#611

Post by EasyMark »

tlogan wrote: post #124

Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars. And they apparently only 21% of daily trips used a private car. Helsinki has about 3x fewer vehicles per capita than the average U.S. city. So it’s not surprising it’s safer since fewer cars mean fewer chances of getting hit by one. Plus their cars are much smaller. In fact, there are probably plenty of U.S. towns and cities with similar number of cars that have zero tra…

but it would probably be hard to find an American city of just 10k people that didn't have a few car/car-related deaths a year, DUI, pedestrians, bicyclists--something. Helsinki is 660,000 people

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#612

Post by gs17 »

crote wrote: post #471
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't road design, it is behavioural/cultural. People will drive recklessly when they do not care, for whatever reason, about the people they may injure by doing so. That is it. If you look at comparisons between countries, it is clear that means are different.

I disagree, idiots are everywhere. The thing is, the vast majority of people - regardless of culture - have some basic sense of self-preservation. Speeding is easy when that 30km/h road is designed like a 120km/h highway. Speeding is a lot harder when that 30km/h road has speed bumps, chicanes, bottlenecks, and is paved with bricks rather than asphalt: if you try to speed, it'll quickly feel like you need to be a pro…

That's true. I stopped riding the bus because the road to the stop had big speed bumps put in, and it turns out distracted drivers fly off the road when they hit them, and one near miss was enough to make me drive instead (sure it's a cognitive bias, but it's enough to make me pick the more convenient option). One fewer pedestrian means one fewer potential pedestrian death!

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#614

Post by EasyMark »

dilyevsky wrote: post #211
max_ wrote: 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.

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...

do they charge as a % of annual income or wealth? I think that would be the key in the USA. I'll risk a $300 ticket for speeding, probably not a $3000 ticket

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#615

Post by EasyMark »

astura wrote: post #37
max_ wrote: 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.

For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.

using a different units system doesn't make you dumb. Otherwise the USA would still be navel gazing instead of star gazing

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#616

Post by EasyMark »

weberer wrote: post #610
vondur wrote: post #588

Pretty impressive. I doubt you'd find a comparably sized US city with zero traffic deaths in a year.

Someone above posted that Jersey City also achieved that in 2022.

That's neat, I wonder how they compare on average over a couple decades.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#617

Post by woodruffw »

DaSHacka wrote: post #468
woodruffw wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's why the second half of the equation is structural traffic calming: you both need to lower the speed limit and induce lower driving speeds. The US has historically not done a great job at the latter, and has mostly treated it as an enforcement problem (speeding cameras and tickets) rather than an environmental one (making the driver feel uncomfortable going over the speed limit, e.g. by making roads narrow…

> the >95% of the populace that speeds because it "feels right," and not because they're sociopathically detached. What about driving over the speed limit makes one "sociopathically detached"?

I think you misread this. The point was that >95% of people drive over the speed limit because it feels right, not because they’re sociopaths. Making it feel wrong to speed is sufficient for most people.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#618

Post by jcul »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #549
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…

I lived in Norway for a few years, and something I thought was interesting is everyone who went on a walk would wear a hi-viz vest/arm band. The kindergartners were cute, they'd all where hi viz overalls on their afternoon walks and be tied together like sled dogs. Another thing in Norway, at least in the town I was in, it was almost a guarantee that you'd be breathalyzed on a early saturday/sunday morning if you wer…

There have been a few attempts in Ireland to make it illegal to walk at night without high viz.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#619

Post by woodruffw »

cyberax wrote: post #351
woodruffw wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've sort of given it away with the "smaller cities" thing. People who live in NYC don't want to live in a smaller American-style city with suburban sprawl. (You've also glossed over the more painful statistic: for every lifetime-equivalent lost on mass transit inefficiencies, there are hundreds lost to gridlock in NYC. That number, already terrible, would be far worse without the city's mass transit -- you simply…

I mean, I don't hide my despair at large cities. They're destroying the fabric of the Western civilization by acting as black holes for population. > You've also glossed over the more painful statistic: for every lifetime-equivalent lost on mass transit inefficiencies, there are hundreds lost to gridlock in NYC. Here's the thing. A well-designed human-oriented city like Houston has FASTER commutes than ANY similar-si…

This framing that commute time matters more than anything else about a city seems facially incorrect. And once again, it glosses over the actual reality here: people living in dense cities want the benefits of dense living, and there’s no tractable way to maintain that while designing a city primarily for car traffic.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#620

Post by formerly_proven »

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…

You go 30 km/h. A kid runs on the street. You manage to stop just in front of it.

You go 40 km/h. The same kid runs on the same street. You brake the exact same way. You hit the kid with over 30 km/h. You just killed a kid.

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