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Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

politico.eu

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Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#91

Post by cucumber3732842 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #86

This is certainly a good thing, but for all the Americans self-flagellating in the comments, it is mostly because Helsinki is wealthy, tiny (600k people), and doesn’t drive that much - mostly because of its high population density. Compare it to wealthy US states and you’ll see similar numbers: Mass has 4 deaths per billion km, RI/MN/NH have 5, Switzerland/Sweden has 3, Germany has 4, Finland has 5, France has 6. If…

All of the people who self flagellate on these topics know that the wealthy urban Northeast has similar stats to Europe on any given issue.

They're self flagellating because they can't just come out and say what "those people off in Iowa, yeah, well F them" or something along those lines.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#92

Post by cucumber3732842 »

randerson wrote: post #21
cyberax wrote: post #3

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths are up in all the large coastal US cities that went full-on with the "Zero Vision" policies. Seattle, Portland, SF enshittified their roads, limited the traffic speed, choked the streets with bike lanes, drank all the KoolAid. Yet the deaths _increased_.

But there's practically zero enforcement and everyone knows it. You have the few law abiding people doing 25 while others are doing 50 while stoned and texting.. on the same road. Narrowing lanes creates new hazards because cars sold are only getting larger and can barely fit. There is too often no margin for error. There are no roadworthiness inspections in these states. Many people are driving on worn tires and sus…

It has nothing to do with enforcement and everything to do with roads being interconnected and naturally load balancing thanks to modern gps routing.

You slow down a main through road it puts that traffic right onto residential roads that formerly weren't worth taking and so someone's kid who used to ride their bike in the street has to either stop or risk getting turned into paste.

I live in a state with stringent roadworthiness inspections BTW.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#93

Post by cyberax »

efebarlas wrote: post #26
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I want to learn more about “it did not work in the us… excess deaths” Do you have a link handy for this?

Seattle traffic deaths: https://wtsc.wa.gov/dashboards/fatalities-dashboard/ - select "Seattle" in the city filter and "Pedestrian" in the filter below.

This article has SF pedestrian deaths by year: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2026/pedestrian-fatalit...

For Portland you need to check their police news archives, I couldn't find a dashboard. Here are the data from 2016 and 2024: https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/document... (13 pedestrian deaths), https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/document... (22 pedestrian deaths). The population growth was 9% between 2016 and 2024.

I don't have an explanation for these increases, and there are no good papers that explore this in depth. I need to write a meta-research paper: "On the lack of research on urbanism-related policy failures".

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#94

Post by cyberax »

tialaramex wrote: post #60
cyberax wrote: post #3

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths are up in all the large coastal US cities that went full-on with the "Zero Vision" policies. Seattle, Portland, SF enshittified their roads, limited the traffic speed, choked the streets with bike lanes, drank all the KoolAid. Yet the deaths _increased_.

We can certainly guess that person who thinks "Vision Zero" is actually "Zero Vision" isn't great on details.

So I provided them in another post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47242382 ). Does that change anything in your attitude towards the Zero Vision policies?

The data shows that these policies have comprehensively failed in Seattle, SF, and Portland. They did not result in a decrease in deaths through the use of traffic engineering. There are likely multiple reasons why that happened, but that's beside the point here and should be a subject of at least several PhD theses.

Yet these policies measurably worsened the average quality of life by increasing congestion, and lengthening the average commutes.

So given these data, what should be done next?

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#95

Post by cyberrock »

tl2do wrote: post #66

Contrast with Japan, my country, where bike accidents have risen 3 years straight and now make up 20%+ of all traffic incidents. Japan's response: heavier fines. Helsinki's: redesign the system. Big difference in philosophy.

I'm not sure where I saw it but I think I read that most recent increases in Japanese bicycle accidents are from bicycles turning right. It seems like the push to make bicycles use the road more (to reduce pedestrian vs bicycle accidents, which are still rising) had the unintentional consequence of making cyclists more likely to perform right turns like cars and motorcycles. However the road law actually requires bicycles to do two-stage turns, which they were more likely to do when they were riding on the sidewalk, and what cyclists in Amsterdam and Copenhagen recommend doing. So, I mean, sure, more cycling paths would improve the situation by making cyclists perform 2 stage turns, but there's nothing really stopping us from doing it now.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#96

Post by cyberax »

Scoundreller wrote: post #31
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm confused: what didn't work in Seattle/SF/Portland? Enforcement didn't work because people won't follow the law anyway or engineering didn't work because people tried to drive through the obstacles or approach them with the same speed and smashed/smooshed more?

Engineering didn't work. Seattle/SF/Portland vigorously attempted to implement the Zero Vision recommendations. The war-on-cars in other words.

And if the problem was in enforcement in the first place, then why do all the engineering that actively worsens the traffic?

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#98

Post by analognoise »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #80
suzdude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many hundreds of millions has capitalism killed? Considering American involved Wars: American Civil War, Vietnam War, First Gulf War, Iraq War, World War 2 Considering how many millions have died due to unrestrained capitalism destroying ecosystem, contaminating air, water, soil? Please do not pretend that capitalism does not promote nor allow the deaths of those who it is profitable to allow to die.

Every death under socialism is attributed to socialism. Every death under capitalism is attributed to individual failing or inevitability. Please follow the rules.

It’s a very convenient set of rules, that allow us to place all the deaths into another column in our tabulation.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#99

Post by ggggffggggg »

fnord77 wrote: post #53
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

not sure why you're getting downvoted. Traffic deaths in SF definitely went up after "Vision Zero" was implemented

As someone living in SF since before it was implemented, getting the causality right and excluding cofounders seems VERY hard. Things have changed so much here since the early 00s.

Re: Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death

#100

Post by autoexec »

suzdude wrote: post #10

It is sad how little U.S. voters seem to care about anyone but themselves. Near everything the Finns are dong could be done in here, but too many voices would complain about the cost, the paternalism, or how they might be slightly inconvenienced. Those seem like harder challenges then the changes themselves.

I don't doubt that US voters won't want to limit speeds to 18mph and fill our roads with speed cameras to enforce it.

I'm guessing that if average commute time in Helsinki was anywhere near what it is in the US they'd probably want to get to their destinations a little faster.

We could probably get away with it if we also redesigned every city and suburb and invested massive amounts of money into public transportation to get something comparable and after all of that I'm sure that many people would probably be happy with what we ended up with, but the disruption of every person's lives in the process would be extremely painful.

We're better off focusing on making sure that new developments are better designed than bulldozing over people's homes and businesses in order to redesign everything we already have.

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