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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

#621

Post by Qwertious »

throwawaye2456 wrote: post #584
tim333 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>because merchants in the town would be afraid to lose business due to less car traffic.

This is true (merchants do have that fear) but the fear is unfounded, because far more traffic comes in from local foot traffic than car traffic, so business goes up when the area pedestrianizes.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#622

Post by watwut »

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…

Rural superiority complex is very real. Rural people can be extremely condescending and openly feel much superior then people in the cities.

Large politics is such that insulting city people is completely acceptable, but dare you say anything about rural people.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#623

Post by throwaway9832 »

Mawr wrote: post #496
throwaway9832 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

If you stick to 100, then every tom, dick, and harry will overtake you creating a lot of opportunity for mistakes.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#624

Post by throwaway9832 »

franga2000 wrote: post #511
throwaway9832 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

If you think the measure of driving rusk isn’t per km, then you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

And just repeating things doesn’t make them different, up to 7.5 tones, it is the same speed and that is plenty enough different weight for stopping distance.

But then again, it is a useless conversation because you have no idea what road safety is about as you seem to focus on absolute numbers and the best way to get absolute 0 is to close all roads and ban driving.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#625

Post by vander_elst »

locallost wrote: post #595
jijijijij wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fix…

I agree on cars, but pensions don't come from taxes.

Where do German pensions come from?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#626

Post by userbinator »

Mawr wrote: post #507
userbinator wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't estimate how fast traffic is moving, you are either a child too young to cross unattended, or an idiot deserving of your fate. Pedestrians have far better visibility and can stop or change directions far more quickly than the slowest car.

Were you forced to operate your vehicle by the pedestrian crossing the street? No? Then take responsibility for your own damn choices. You're the one endangering everyone around you, not the pedestrians.

Were you forced to cross the street without looking either?

What fucking retarded arguments these anti-car radicalists spew...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#627

Post by userbinator »

Mawr wrote: post #505
userbinator wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whatever happened to the person choosing to operate dangerous machinery being the one responsible for it? Putting the onus of safety on everyone else is incredibly selfish and of course illogical. Oh, and I'll be sure to tell my blind friend to look both ways before crossing.

If you can't see how the laws of physics work, then I have no interest in talking to you.

Blind people have their own accommodations, so they're irrelevant to this stupid argument.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#628

Post by userbinator »

wyre wrote: post #311
knome wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking both ways is undone if drivers are speeding, not bothering to stop at stop signs and being generally unpredictable and dangerous. Blaming pedestrians for getting run over by speeders that are too impatient to drive at safe speeds in residential areas is a ludicrous opinion to take.

I’d go a step further and say blaming pedestrians for getting ran over when a driver can’t pay attention to avoid them is a ludicrous opinion. If anyone disagrees I ask what traffic rule is more important than a human life?

If anyone disagrees I ask what traffic rule is more important than a human life?

How is that relevant? This is simple physics, the laws of reality which you seem to be desperately trying to avoid to make some sort of ideological point.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#629

Post by rtpg »

edm0nd wrote: post #541
rtpg wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at this 2023 report[0] you can see the following sort of stats (page 34): between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year: - 60% drop in Lithuania - 50% drop in Poland - ~38% drop in Japan - 20% drop in Germany - 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether change…

given the date range, wouldn't these be heavily skewed due to COVID alone?

I think you could describe a part of it as COVID-related, though not that much. The trends predate COVID and continued beyond 2020-2021 (really the peak of activity being pulled back in Japan).

2013 saw 4.4k fatalities. 2019 saw 3.2k fatalities. 2020 saw 2.8k fatalities.

In 1970 there were 16.7k fatalities.

I think it would be very hard to argue that COVID explains both the Japan drops while seeing increases in other countries to that extent. In the comparative analysis one can argue that COVID affected some places more than others, of course. But the improvement gap between, say, Japan and New Zealand is pretty huge!

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#630

Post by cyberax »

Mawr wrote: post #526
cyberax wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Here's the thing. A well-designed human-oriented city like Houston has FASTER commutes than ANY similar-sized city in Europe. Didn't I debunk your nonsense "data" last time? Why are you repeating incorrect data when you've been corrected? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42648738

No, you didn't. You googled the first numbers you could find and threw them over the wall.

The official commute time (one direction) for Houston is in the Census. It was 27.6 minutes in the 2023 ACS: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2023.S0801?q=commuting&... (data series: "Workers 16 years and over who did not work from home", "Mean travel time to work (minutes)", restriction by "Census place" = "Houston city, TX"). Make sure you're not looking at "Houston county", which is a small rural area with a population of 20000 people.

And I was talking about the commute time in _large_ cities in Europe, comparable with Houston's population of 7 million. The best is Berlin, with 31 minutes.

So I suppose you're going to apologize for providing the incorrect data?

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