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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

#651

Post by rudolftheone »

wpm wrote: post #18
calmbonsai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.

You don’t need to be either. Suppose a trip is 5km. At 50km/h, that trip takes 6 minutes. At 30km/h, that trip takes 10 minutes. In practice, this naive way of calculating this doesn’t even reflect reality, because odds are the average speed of a driver through Helsinki was around 30km/h anyways. Going 50km/h between red lights doesn’t actually make your trip faster.

I'm not an advocate for speeding in the cities, but this example is really bad - it says my trip time will be extended by 66%! For a really short one, it doesn't matter, but when you drive 40 minutes initially, it's really unacceptable for most.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#652

Post by Dylan16807 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #576
fmbb wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing artificial about that. The more you annoy drivers of cars and the less efficient you make streets for car traffic and the more you force them to not trust their surroundings, the safer the streets are for everyone.

Usually roundabouts are way better for this than excessive stoplighting. With stoplighting you run the risk of basically “the boy who cried wolf” and people becoming numb and starting to run reds.

I can't figure out how this would happen. Inside a city I'd expect even with excessive lights there'd still be plenty of cross traffic at red lights and you wouldn't start to think of them as useless and runnable. And inside or outside a city, I expect lights to be equipped with car detection so that main paths stay green whenever possible and when there's no cross traffic it's basically the same as not having a light.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#653

Post by anilakar »

EasyMark wrote: post #614
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...

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

Income after taxes. The maximum count is 120 fines, or approximately sixty days' net income. They can be levied without a separate court order.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#654

Post by afiori »

lawlessone wrote: post #572
fabioborellini wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finnish rural boys rarely have other personality traits than their favourite car brand. It’s usually BMW or Volvo, and friendships must follow the shared brand following. Someone driving a Nissan Micra should starve to death, according to both camps.

Sounds like Windows and Linux users talking about Macs

or Linux and Macs users talking about Windows, or Macs and Windows users talking about Linux

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#655

Post by Dylan16807 »

Sesse__ wrote: post #575
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The kindergartners were cute, they'd all where hi viz overalls on their afternoon walks and be tied together like sled dogs. They're typically not tied together. There's a rope and everybody is told to hold on to it (this makes it a lot less likely that anyone wanders off into traffic). > And I was told even if you were .02 you'd lose your license for a year, and 10% of you salary as a fine. This is only partially…

> Basically what happened when we moved the limit from .05 to .02 is that people stopped having “only one beer” (which is, of course, at risk of becoming three) before driving home. You choose a designated driver or you take public transport. It was a Good Thing.

Eww, that's a pretty ugly way to accomplish that. So even if you're actually fine to drive, and it's been quite a while since you had alcohol, you're facing a huge monetary risk just because some assholes would lie about how many drinks they had.

In particular if you have three drinks and then wait four hours you should not have to get someone else to drive you around because you can't guarantee you're below .02

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#656

Post by locallost »

BonitaPersona wrote: post #645
locallost wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the pension system which is separate from taxation. De jure the current pensioners paid into the system for decades and now get paid back. De facto they get funded by contributions of the currently employed, but they don't swallow up any tax money or hold anyone hostage because if the current system was scrapped there would not be more tax money available for other things (e.g. public transport). The money is co…

That's just a different way of saying "taxes". > because if the current system was scrapped there would not be more tax money available for other things But I would retain more of my money.

You can argue about that, but they're still not a burden on the state's tax system. If the pension system in the current form went away, the taxes would neither increase or decrease.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#657

Post by Dylan16807 »

WHA8m wrote: post #504
sc11 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically describing Volt Europa. They're having some success with that approach in Germany and the Netherlands, primarily at the municipality level

The last election must have been around the recent middle-east events (framing it purposefully neutral), because I remember I had some conflicting thoughts about their stance. I can't (honestly) remember if I voted for them then or not - but I strongly considered it, that much I know. Edit: Writing this out I think, I'm probably part of the problem. Voters should remember who they voted for and benchmark the results…

Doing that benchmarking is far more important then whether you actually voted for them last time. If you do the former then I don't think you're part of the problem.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#658

Post by pbhjpbhj »

IshKebab wrote: post #490
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-to-30 causes a step change in pedestrian outcomes, so no, the logical conclusion isn't 0mph. Also the average speed on 30mph roads before the changeover was around 20mph. It improves traffic flow and reduces pollution too. My only objection is that it's been applied in a somewhat blind way. Long sections of road with no houses and no reported accidents should probably be 30, or even 40mph.

> the logical conclusion isn't 0mph Yes it is. If the only thing you consider is safety then 0mph is the safest. That's unarguable. The point is that you can't only consider safety. There are other factors, but they are often deliberately ignored.

Well also we need to kill everyone so noone can die, the only logical conclusion.

If that's your best argument _against_ saving lives through road traffic controls then at least we know it's not wrong...

I hope your computer is completely unsecured, because if you cared about security you wouldn't even use the web.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#659

Post by egorfine »

jamesblonde wrote: post #601
Aurornis wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

In many european countries, a right-turn can be a red light (green for pedestrians crossing) and if there are no pedestrians around, you can run the red light. That's prob what was happening.

Not necessarily.

I live in Warsaw, Poland for over 2 years now and I still have no idea what is the message the Poles try to communicate via honking.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#660

Post by potato3732842 »

Symbiote wrote: post #600
potato3732842 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Block the residential streets to through car traffic. Simple.

And degrade the quality of life of every resident who regularly has a car trip living in one of those neighborhoods by making them circle 1-3 blocks of 1-ways and right only intersections (or whatever other solution you implement for making it worse to drive through).

You're basically saying that thousands of people ought to have their lives made marginally worse so you can claim success because the city loses 1.24 lives per year to cars instead of the 1.39 before the change or something like that. This entire attitude is predicated on the idea that experts working at the statistical level know better than the people who have to live it. That's preposterous. Get bent.

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