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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

#91
post #40
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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i think a large part of this that often goes unstated is the suburban sprawl that causes people to need to drive longer distances near pedestrians to begin with -- do you live in an area with wide streets, many single-family homes, and parking lots? when i've lived in city neighborhoods with dense housing i've only had to drive far/fast to leave, and when i've lived in the middle of nowhere i wasn't at risk of flattening pedestrians

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#92
post #80

At the same time NYC and Toronto, we are removing protected bike lanes. In North America the acceptable amount of lives per year to sacrifice for a little convenience for drivers is above zero, and apparently rising.

This is a great reason to have snap elections instead of scheduled elections. Mayor Adams will scorch the earth to get the votes of a handful of extremists in his quixotic reelection attempt, and will harm lots of people in doing so.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#93
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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It may feel like you aren’t going very fast, but at the end of the day you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would and when applied at scale this could potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives a year depending on how widely this is adopted. Hell maybe hundreds of thousands, but I don’t know the numbers well enough to make a claim that high, seem…

> you’re probably only arriving at your location a couple of minutes later than you normally would

That depends on the total journey distance.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#94
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers are actually calm in Helsinki, not constantly honking and slowly rolling into you in the pedestrian crossing either.

Other places have introduced the same limit and haven't seen the same results. People who are likely to have crashes are likely to be able who ignore the limit. One of the biggest problems in modern policy-making is the introduction of wide-ranging, global policies to tackle a local problem (one place that introduced this limit was Wales, they introduced this limit impacting everyone...but don't do anything about the…

> People who are likely to have crashes are likely to be able who ignore the limit.

... which is why you have to do actual road design. You can't just put up a speed sign and hope people will magically abide by it. Roads need to be designed for the speed you want people to drive. When done properly the vast majority of drivers will follow the speed limit without ever having to look at the signs, because it'll be the speed they will feel comfortable driving.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#95
post #40
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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If we were a real country, we would actively hunt down people who express this sentiment and seize their vehicles until after they satisfy a psychological exam.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, scooters are much less likely to kill pedestrians during collisions. I'm glad more people who didn't actually need 2 ton metal boxes are downsizing to something more practical.

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The Nordics aren’t struggling at all in this area, they also have incredibly generous parental leave and subsidised child care systems.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#97
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere No, they only made it more painful to get into the city streets by car. And probably not by much, as it only matters if you are not stuck in traffic or waiting at a red light. Helsinki is a walkable city with good public transport, cars are not the only option. > Mass surveillance under the ever present and weak excuse of “safety” Speed traps (t…

> Speed traps (that's probably what is talked about here) are a very targeted from of surveillance, only taking pictures of speeding vehicles. Speed cameras in practice will use ALPR, and by the time the hardware capable of doing ALPR is installed, they'll then have the incentive to record every passing vehicle in a database whether it was speeding or not, and whether or not they're "allowed" to do that when the came…

There's actually an incentive to not store more data than is necessary, like the jenoptik average speed cameras, which only store info on speeding vehicles: https://www.jenoptik.com/products/road-safety/average-speed-...

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's probably the point. Cars kill many more people than scooters.

Not per mile driven.

Most scooter and bike deaths are from being ran over by a car going too fast for the zone. If you take that into the equation of the car (instead of the scooter or bike); then you probably only have heart attacks from warm weather left as a mortality cause for the bike.

So no, even per mile driven, cars kill people and bikes pretty much don't. And you should take the buss or train everywhere if you follow that logic to the extreme.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#99
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.

So, for the records, when epidemiologist say "speed kills", the fact that high speed are more dangerous for your health is not the point.

The main cause of mortal accidents is loss of control, way over attention deficit (depend on the country, in mine its 82% but we have an unhealthy amount of driving under influence, which cause a lot of accident classified under attention deficit. I've seen a figure of 95% in the middle east). The majority of the "loss of control" cases are caused by speed. That's it. Speed make you loose control of your car.

You hit the break at the right moment, but you go to fast and bam, dead. You or sometimes the pedestrian you saw 50 meters ago. But your break distance almost doubled because you were speeding, and now you're a killer.

Or your wife put to much pression in your tires, and you have a bit of rain on the road, which would be OK on this turn at the indicated speed, but you're late, and speeding. Now your eldest daughter got a whiplash so strong they still feel it 20 years after, your second daughter spent 8 month in the coma, and your son luckily only broke his arm. You still missed your plane btw.

Re: Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

#100
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers are actually calm in Helsinki, not constantly honking and slowly rolling into you in the pedestrian crossing either.

Other places have introduced the same limit and haven't seen the same results. People who are likely to have crashes are likely to be able who ignore the limit. One of the biggest problems in modern policy-making is the introduction of wide-ranging, global policies to tackle a local problem (one place that introduced this limit was Wales, they introduced this limit impacting everyone...but don't do anything about the…

Your example is definitely not a good example of global policies for a local problem. In Wales it was up to the local councils to identify areas that under proper safe circumstances would keep their different limits, defaulting to being reduced to 20mph if nothing was done. That's a very sensible way of handling it.

I have no idea about your stats on driving without a licence being more of a problem than speeding, accidents on roads that got the speed reduced to 20mph or 30mph decreased by 19% YoY, that's a big impact for mostly no additional policing needed.

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