Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year • Hacker News Board

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#691

Post by forkeep » Thu, Aug 07, 2025, 3:35 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #558

yieldcrv wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthering the tangent, its annoying that parties’ primary goal is to gain influence, but in the US one party’s adherents pick a fairly random rights issue and vilify you if that’s not your particular top cause at that random point in time. It would be one thing if that approach worked to gain influence, but it doesn’t. Instead they then say “what!? All of our core demographics picked the party with character traits…

> its annoying that parties’ primary goal is to gain influence Inevitable consequence of a representive democracy. Parties are chosen based on electability, which is merely a proxy for good policy. This means parties that don't optimise for electability at the cost of good policy will eventually be outcompeted by those that do. (It's for this reason Graeber sometimes jokingly (?) called representative democracy "elec…

[dead]

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#692

Post by sampo » Fri, Aug 08, 2025, 12:22 PM UTC

For posterity: If counting by full months, this 12-month span was a close one: There was a traffic death in early July in 2024. And now on August 1, 2025, there was another traffic death (a collision of two bicyclists, one 80-year old on an electric bike, and one 70-year old on a normal bike. The younger one died.)

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#693

Post by Earw0rm » Fri, Aug 08, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #646

Earw0rm wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that cities are for things besides going from your suburban family home unit to your workplace and back again?

Which "things"? Pretty much the only thing is the availability of bars and night clubs. And people past the age of 20-25 are typically not that interested in them. Anything else: museums, operas, theaters, etc. Take up an insignificant amount of time in the real life. For example, most NYC citizens go to museums exactly 0 times a year.

Then why are they paying $3M for a condo? Because it's not 20-25 year olds doing that.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#694

Post by davidthewatson » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 2:07 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #281

throwaway9832 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving? Is that a fair characterization of your comment?

If so, that's interesting.

Why?

One of my principles is that we gain control of an uncontrollable environment by relinquishing control to that environment. It may not be obvious, but icy roads are an uncontrollable environment. Hence, the rally driver gains control by relinquishing control, allowing the car to have an imaginary and symbolic role in her success (all hail Michelle Mouton). Think of the best Scandinavian WRC champ. In the real world, abandoning driving is advisable for many, or if continuing to drive in obviously unsafe conditions, controlling what can be controlled by lowering speed, etc.

This may seem improvisational, as some of it is indeed. However, these control schemes may be orchestrated as well. How? By ranking tires by performance in the worst winter conditions on Tire Rack before making a choice. Do that and everyone wins.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#695

Post by jijijijij » Wed, Aug 13, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

pragmatick wrote: post #643

vander_elst wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do German pensions come from?

They're not strictly taxes but they kinda are. They're mandatory and paid by workers into a fund but are linked to your future pensions. Like taxes they're automatically deducted from your salary and legally required but earmarked as to be used in the future. Which has worked well for quite some time but I don't believe I'll every see any of the money I'm currently paying into the system.

No, on top of social security „taxes“, you also have something like 140 billion euro substitutions to pensions from income tax money, as far as I know. On top you get increased healthcare costs, cause boomer also get sick at that age. So young, working people pay thrice for their lifestyle. And in particular, those 140G€ are not spent on infrastructure and Germany’s future. Coincidentally, social welfare is a fraction of that, but aaall the rage to those boomers, who benefited from low taxes and high pensions, while spending 40 years in ignorance of their generation’s demographic burden.

Don’t forget, we got a young generation severely hurt because of COVID restrictions on their social life and education at the most critical time. That generation had the least to worry about the plague, it’s been pure sacrifice for old folks, who were the ones slowly suffocating in bursting emergency rooms. Two years of death and struggle and demographic crisis no more, but we were kind and compassionate, hidden behind webcams and masks at the prime of our youth. The boomers’ gratitude was shown by completely ignoring the climate crisis, the housing crisis (guess who got the houses…), the immense infrastructure debt, and instead increasing taxes etc., and of course making culture wars and hatred their scapegoat. The most egotistical generation ever.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#696

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #652

bobthepanda wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ligh…

I mean, we saw this when traffic disappeared during COVID and red light running shot up significantly. https://info.oregon.aaa.com/why-did-crashes-spike-during-cov...

Car detection is certainly not a standard feature of stoplights in the US, and they represent an ongoing expense since you have to maintain the detection loops, pay an outside vendor for software to maintain and modify stoplights, etc. A roundabout is more or less installed and done.