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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

#671

Post by Saline9515 »

nedt wrote: post #648
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…

> repressing the urge to listen music Have you seen how many car drivers can't resist to listen to music? They even drive with closed windows. It's even worse like having headphones on, because they don't hear people shouting before they hit them plus a car is faster and heavier. Let's start there for general safety.

It's illegal to wear headphones while riding a bike in France.

And car drivers don't wear helmet either, yet I don't hear motorcyclists whine that it's unfair that we ask them to wear one for their own safety. Again, you can't refuse to follow basic safety rules, then complain that cyclists die on the road.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#672

Post by lettuceconstant »

shkkmo wrote: post #550
lettuceconstant wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the situation in your city, but there problem really is that a comparatively large portion of e-scooter drivers are either idiots or drunk and idiots. At least here they should follow same traffic rules as bikes, but it's very common to see them driving amid pedestrians. Of course, no gear present whatsoever. The average scooter accident is also more serious than the average cycling accident with h…

Yeah, I personally would choose a bike over a scooter. However I would much rather have an drunk idiot on a scooter than driving a car.

No doubt. It's just that people do not feel as seriously about scootering drunk as they do about driving drunk (and of course, they should not. It's obviously not the same level of risk.) The rental scooters seem provide an easy avenue for the drunk to drive around at 20 kph instead of just meandering along the sidewalk in a leisurely manner, or taking a cab.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#673

Post by Symbiote »

potato3732842 wrote: post #660
Symbiote wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Wasn't the point to improve quality of life by making streets children can play on?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#674

Post by specialist »

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…

Can the urge to drive (fast) be channeled into cart racing? Or whatever the amateur rally circuit equivalent is?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#675

Post by shkkmo »

lettuceconstant wrote: post #672
shkkmo wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I personally would choose a bike over a scooter. However I would much rather have an drunk idiot on a scooter than driving a car.

No doubt. It's just that people do not feel as seriously about scootering drunk as they do about driving drunk (and of course, they should not. It's obviously not the same level of risk.) The rental scooters seem provide an easy avenue for the drunk to drive around at 20 kph instead of just meandering along the sidewalk in a leisurely manner, or taking a cab.

Sometimes some people seem to need to learn lessons the hard way. It's much better if that hard lesson comes on a scooter rather than in a car.

If we can get people to go to bars/etc on rental scooters then they won't have a car to get back in when they are drunk. Ideally they walk, bus or taxi at that point (new public education campaigns can help with this), but even if they get on a rental scooter, that's still a win for public safety.

I'll point out that it is much easier to take a taxi home and leave a rental scooter at a bar then to have to leave your car there overnight and go back the next day.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#676

Post by projektfu »

j1elo wrote: post #661
projektfu wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your daughter lived with her mother and you had the day to spend with her, I bet you'd rather take 90 mins round trip to spend not with her, instead of 180 or more? I mean, it's easy to romantizice anything if you go for the "happy path" like we say when programming. Both transportation modes have very happy (and also very terrible) paths. I'm just a proponent of keeping the chance of choosing both modes, not kill…

I suppose I come from a pathological country where people will choose a 60 minute one way commute and then complain because traffic worsened and now it's a 90 minute commute, but they still oppose alternatives and feel it's their right to menace pedestrians in areas they are just passing through.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#677

Post by Dylan16807 »

Sesse__ wrote: post #663
Dylan16807 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You're saying this like “having three drinks, waiting a couple of hours and then driving home” is some sort of obviously reasonable (or even desirable) thing to do.

I didn't specify where. Maybe you drank at home. Maybe you drank somewhere, already got home, and then waited over two more hours. Or maybe you drank at lunch and you want to drive home for dinner.

And not a couple. Four hours. One hour per drink plus an entire extra hour. There's so little alcohol left at that point.

But that's just an example of how very long the rule stretches out. The basic example of "one drink, drive home" is the main thing affected, and banning it when there was no problem with people actually doing that is pretty sucky.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#678

Post by Sesse__ »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #677
Sesse__ wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying this like “having three drinks, waiting a couple of hours and then driving home” is some sort of obviously reasonable (or even desirable) thing to do.

I didn't specify where. Maybe you drank at home. Maybe you drank somewhere, already got home, and then waited over two more hours. Or maybe you drank at lunch and you want to drive home for dinner. And not a couple. Four hours. One hour per drink plus an entire extra hour. There's so little alcohol left at that point. But that's just an example of how very long the rule stretches out. The basic example of "one drink,…

I recognize that you think this is a great injustice towards something, but since the level was moved from .05 to .02 (in 2001), the number of traffic deaths in Norway (of which 64% involved alcohol over the legal limit at the time) has dropped by about 2/3. Simply put, fewer people are drunk driving and fewer people are dying due to it.

FWIW, the level was set at .02 because it was the closest to zero one could get and still have a reliable measurement on breathalyzers at the time.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#679

Post by Dylan16807 »

Sesse__ wrote: post #678
Dylan16807 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't specify where. Maybe you drank at home. Maybe you drank somewhere, already got home, and then waited over two more hours. Or maybe you drank at lunch and you want to drive home for dinner. And not a couple. Four hours. One hour per drink plus an entire extra hour. There's so little alcohol left at that point. But that's just an example of how very long the rule stretches out. The basic example of "one drink,…

I recognize that you think this is a great injustice towards something, but since the level was moved from .05 to .02 (in 2001), the number of traffic deaths in Norway (of which 64% involved alcohol over the legal limit at the time) has dropped by about 2/3. Simply put, fewer people are drunk driving and fewer people are dying due to it. FWIW, the level was set at .02 because it was the closest to zero one could get…

You're the one that listed the injustice I'm reacting to:

> 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.

If you hadn't said that line I wouldn't have said anything.

But that line directly states that people that actually had one beer were being screwed over to get people to stop drinking more than one beer.

Is that line not accurate? Am I missing something that makes it not actually an injustice?

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#680

Post by rendang »

jrflowers wrote: post #333
tlogan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially, this was the cheapest solution for our “limousine liberals” to address the problem of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco’s public schools. The idea was simple: since schools in areas like Hunter’s Point struggle, while those in neighborhoods like the Sunset perform well, the district decided to send students from Hunter’s Point to Sunset schools, and vice versa in order to “balance” outcome…

> Essentially, this was the cheapest solution for our “limousine liberals” to address the problem of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco’s public schools It is frustrating to see this happen when —while it would be more expensive— they could’ve dealt with that by just

Just what?
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