19 ms·

Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

1163 points by DaveZale 1y ago

SilverElfin 1y ago
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reducing injuries, which newer safety technologies in cars will achieve. > Cooperation between city officials and police has increased, with more automated speed enforcement Mass surveillance under the ever present and weak excuse of “safety”.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.
  - DaveZale 1y ago
    I wonder if the "5 minute city" approach would also help. Just zone the cities so that getting that burger doesn't even involve driving at all, just a brisk walk?
    - masklinn 1y ago
      Of course it would, but mention that and America loses its mind.
    - kennywinker 1y ago
      Good for the environment. Good for your health (more walking). Good for traffic safety (less fatalities). Good for the health care system. Good for your mental health and feeling of connectedness to your community. Good for the economy (more local businesses and less large box monopolies means more employment). And on the cons side… hurts oil execs, national and international retailers, and people who define freedom as having to pay $5 to exxon to get groceries.
  - calmbonsai 1y ago
    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.
    - Detrytus 1y ago
      30km/h is actually above the average travel speed you typically achieve in a big city, if you take traffic jams into account.
      - moralestapia 1y ago
        Exactly my point.
      - SoftTalker 1y ago
        Yes, take Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. 4 or 5 lanes in each direction, 30mph speed limit, and average speed is often about 5-10mph.
    - jerlam 1y ago
      The average commute is not entirely within the streets with the 30 km/h speed limit. City planners usually try to route car traffic away from residential areas and places with large numbers of pedestrians, through arterials, freeways, and the like, which will have a higher speed limit.
      - Muromec 1y ago
        Most of Amsterdam is 30 km, including through roads. But it's Amsterdam through roads, so it's mostly two lines one way, a dedicated tram track in between, trees that separate the road from a bike path and all that. Actual in-district roads where unsupervised 8 year olds are cycling to school and back are 15 km/h.
    - bluecalm 1y ago
      Because it's not an average speed but max speed. Higher max speed in traffic doesn't make an average speed higher because it makes the traffic less smooth. For example in Switzerland on some highways during rush hour the speed limit goes down to 80km/h. They analyzed it and it turns out it's an optimal speed limit for throughput.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > 50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. This seems like a weird argument. If your commute is an hour at 50 km/h then it's an hour and 40 minutes at 30 km/h, every day, each way. That seems like... quite a lot?
    - gorbachev 1y ago
      The speed limit is not 30km/h for the entire trip.
    - Insanity 1y ago
      Which city is an hour long drive at 50km/h? It’s city centre driving that the article talks about.
      - grosun 1y ago
        You can drive through London for an hour in mostly 20mph (~30km/h) zones. Thing is, you're unlikely to be averaging anything even like 20. Even when the limit used to be 30 you weren't either. My old car averaged 16mph, & that included trips out of town at motorway speeds. When the 20 limits were first introduced, lots of people would speed & overtake, but then you'd catch them up at the next traffic light & the one after etc. I know London's quite an extreme case, but all a 20 limit means in a lot of stop/start urban areas is that you travel to the next stop at a speed which is less hazardous should you hit something/someone, with far more time to react to all the unpredictable things which happen in busy urban areas, thus decreasing the chances of hitting anything in the first place. Yeah, it's mildly boring, but driving in cities pretty much always is. Just put on some music or a podcast and take it easy.
    - numpad0 1y ago
      See, the real problem is that people cover too much distances daily. 50km is more than Luxembourg is wide where it's narrowest. They probably don't commute internationally every day there.
      - decimalenough 1y ago
- elygre 1y ago
  The below article is in Norwegian, but has many references at the end. Apparently people are overwhelmingly happy, so it seems inappropriate to talk about «hurting quality of life». https://www.tiltak.no/d-flytte-eller-regulere-trafikk/d2-regulere-trafikk/fartsgrense-30-km-t-i-store-soner-og-hele-byer-som-tiltak-for-baerekraftig-byutvikling/ https://www.tiltak.no/d-flytte-eller-regulere-trafikk/d2-reg...
  - ozim 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - wolfhumble 1y ago
      HN Guidelines: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
- deleted 1y ago
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- voxl 1y ago
  Your argument is really "I'd rather people die then drive through your city slower."????
  - lIl-IIIl 1y ago
    I think the argument "I'd rather have a higher risk of dying than do this other unpleasant thing". Which to be fair everyone does all the time (driving habits, eating habits, etc).
    - gorbachev 1y ago
      No, that's not correct. It's: "I'd rather have other people have higher risk of dying than me having to do something I'd kinda of not want to do even though the inconvenience is minimal". Me, me, me, me and me. Fuck the rest.
      - lIl-IIIl 1y ago
        I agree. I also think it's natural and something we do all the time.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent here; I'm just saying your rebuttal is a strawman.
    - voxl 1y ago
      Since we're pretending to know logical fallacies, your deflecting with a slippery slope. Lowering the speed limit by 20 mph is not an extreme change, and it if demonstrates to improve car safety then yes blood should be on your hands for not wanting to drive 20 mph slower. Alternatively, driving is sometimes necessary to deliver goods and travel. But the funny thing is, is that I would GLADLY ban cars in all cities and heavily invest in high speed rail. Cars would still be needed in this world, but again it's the relative change. So no, it's not a strawman. If anything it was an ad hom.
- jdboyd 1y ago
  Google seems to suggest that the secret to fast travel in Helsinki is to take public transit.
- GuB-42 1y ago
  > 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 (that's probably what is talked about here) are a very targeted from of surveillance, only taking pictures of speeding vehicles. And if it results in traffic deaths going down to zero, that's not a weak excuse. Still not a fan of "automatic speed enforcement" for a variety of reasons, but mass surveillance is not one of them.
  - hgomersall 1y ago
    Given i'm trying to advocate for speed cameras local to me, I'd be interested in your variety of reasons if you're willing to share?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > 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 camera is initially installed. It's like banning end-to-end encryption while promising not to do mass surveillance. Just wait a minute and you know what's coming next.
    - hgomersall 1y ago
      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-camera https://www.jenoptik.com/products/road-safety/average-speed-...
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago
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- lbrito 1y ago
  Have you considered there are alternative modes of transportation other than personal vehicles? Some of them are even - gasp - public transportation, and quite efficient at what you want (fast travel).
- ent 1y ago
  As someone who lives and regularly drives in Helsinki, I feel that most kilometers I drive are on roads that allow 80km/h. The 30km/h limits are mostly in residential areas, close to schools and the city center (where traffic is the limiting factor and it's better to take the public transit). So while 30km/h might be the limit for most of the roads, you mostly run into those only in the beginnings and ends of trips.
- ath3nd 1y ago
  > So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives The average American mind can't comprehend European public transport and not sitting in a traffic jam and smog for 1 hr to go to their workplace. Some of us walk or cycle for 15 min on our commutes, and some of us even ride bicycles with our children to school. It takes me as much time to reach my workplace with a bike as with a car if you take parking, and one of those things makes me fitter and is for free. I guess that's one of the reasons people in the US live shorter and sadder than us Europeans. Being stuck in traffic sure makes people grumpy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...
  - Muromec 1y ago
    Take better from both worlds -- 1 hour bike commute and save on healthcare costs too.
    - Saline9515 1y ago
      Very entitled comment. The food worker who has to stand up for the whole day to make your matcha frappuccino could enjoy some rest on the way home.
      - lbschenkel 1y ago
        Another problem that exists only in the US as they don't treat you as a slave and make you stand the whole day elsewhere. People have chairs and do use them.
        ferongr 1y ago
        Service workers in coffee shops stand all day here in enlightened Europe too.
      - twixfel 1y ago
- OfficeChad 1y ago
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- andriamanitra 1y ago
  > So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reducing injuries, which newer safety technologies in cars will achieve. Like others have pointed out making road speeds faster barely makes a dent in travel times. The absolute best way to reduce travel times is to build denser cities, which incidentally means less parking, narrower roads, and, most importantly, fewer cars. In a densely populated area it's impossible to match the throughput of even a small bike path with anything built for cars. Safety is just a bonus you get for designing better, more efficient, more livable cities.
Nurbek-F 1y ago
Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...
- k_g_b_ 1y ago
  https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ 30 km/h is equal to 20 min/10km, 50 km/h is 12 min/10km. So Helsinki city center is at 21km/h travel speeds, metro area at 31km/h. A speed limit of 30 km/h doesn't really affect these travel times much. I can't find 2023 data to compare, however by other data on the net these are very common average speeds for any city in Europe even those with plenty of 50 km/h speed limits. If more people take up public transport, bikes or scooters in fear of an average travel speed reduction of 1-2 km/h - that is a total win for everyone involved including drivers.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Average speed means you have both above and below speeds? When you lower the speed limit, the average will also go down? But yes, in a city cycle time of traffic lights has a larger effect than max speed.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      > When you lower the speed limit, the average will also go down? Yes, but by much less than OP might naively expect.
  - mikkom 1y ago
    I live in helsinki and nowhere it is 20 kmh that I know of. Might be some random streets in center. And 30km/h streets are smaller living streets that driving that speed comes almost automatically. Major ringways and main roads are 80 kmh btw I have driven in many many countries - Helsinki does not feel slower than any place I have driven, faster in fact because there rarely are traffic jams
    - 1y ago
Tiktaalik 1y ago
Don't let anyone tell you that better things aren't possible
- userbinator 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - beardbound 1y ago
    Sure, but it's also paved with bad intentions, and neutral intentions. I would say that intentions have very little effect on the overall outcome of actions in general. Also good and bad are relative. I would say that the road to outcomes are paved with actions. Not as pithy as the original though.
  - vardump 1y ago
    I think that means intentions alone are not enough.
  - techterrier 1y ago
    * unnecessarily high speed limits
    - userbinator 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - thinkcontext 1y ago
    What are the downsides in this case?
- bapak 1y ago
  Are you suggesting that facts are useful in public debate? Everyone has an agenda and they will follow it regardless of what you show them.
  - NicuCalcea 1y ago
nickserv 1y ago
Great news, good on them. Not only does this make their lives better and safer, but it can help many other cities. Sometimes just knowing that something is possible is enough for people to achieve it.
- vincnetas 1y ago
  for a start when someone does it, others might start realising that it's even possible and start asking for it.
ashoeafoot 1y ago
The emergency service is just that good now. The police murder crime stats go down too while the stabbings go up.
iambateman 1y ago
As Hank Green said…”no one tells you when you don’t die.” There’s several people walking around Helsinki right now who would not be had they not made safety improvements…we just don’t know who they are.
- kennywinker 1y ago
  Several people is an understatement. based on population, if it was the US there’s more than 160 people in Helsinki every year NOT killed. So, thousands of people.
  - anon191928 1y ago
    Meanwhile, US is losing 100 a day for traffic related days. It's literally like a war
    - mallets 1y ago
      And likely 10x that number injured or 3-4x with permanent life-altering injuries.
    - mbs159 1y ago
      Considering that it was ~8 US soldiers / day during the Vietnam war, it seems much worse
- aaron695 1y ago
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max_ 1y ago
"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.
- astura 1y ago
  For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.
  - Dig1t 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - para_parolu 1y ago
      Clearly it’s opposite of killing
    - monster_truck 1y ago
      Something tells me you play on your phone while driving anyways
    - sapiogram 1y ago
      Making drivers miserable is part of the intention, they want people to drive less because it's annoying as hell for everyone else.
      - scns 1y ago
        The intention is to prevent accidents. Encountering 30kmh zones in strange places means there have been loads of them.
      - jmkni 1y ago
        That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure. Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys. This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be taking my life in my hands on some of the roads.
mzmzmzm 1y ago
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.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  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.
  - Alive-in-2025 1y ago
    How does snap elections solve this problem? You'd have less information if it happened in the next week, especially about less well known candidates. You are suggesting that elections coming in a few months leads to tricking people?
    - sdenton4 1y ago
      It creates conditions for more direct accountability. There's a pretty standard pattern of getting elected, doing the more extreme things, and then giving the voters time to cool off before the election happens.
      - jerlam 1y ago
        It also prevents the election losers from lighting everything on fire on the way out.
        jdiff 1y ago
        The pattern in the US seems to be to leave time bombs running that only detonate if you don't get re-elected, something that snap elections wouldn't help with.
- 1y ago
PaulRobinson 1y ago
I was in Helsinki for work a couple of years ago, walking back to my hotel with some colleagues after a few hours drinking (incredibly expensive, but quite nice), beer. It was around midnight and we happened to come across a very large mobile crane on the pavement blocking our way. As we stepped out (carefully), into the road to go around it, one of my Finnish colleagues started bemoaning that no cones or barriers had been put out to safely shepherd pedestrians around it. I was very much "yeah, they're probably only here for a quick job, probably didn't have time for that", because I'm a Londoner and, well, that's what we do in London. My colleague is like "No, that's not acceptable", and he literally pulls out his phone and calls the police. As we carry on on our way, a police car comes up the road and pulls over to have a word with the contractors. They take the basics safely over there in a way I've not seen anywhere else. When you do that, you get the benefits.
- Hamuko 1y ago
  There actually was an incident last year where a man fell to his death at a construction site in Helsinki. I think the man's companion said there was a small gap in the fencing at the time. https://yle.fi/a/74-20111683 https://yle.fi/a/74-20111683
  - seb1204 1y ago
    This is tragic but does not fall under traffic deaths I would assume.
- graemep 1y ago
  On the other hand the UK as a whole had a lower road traffic realted death rate than Finland did: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023#international-comparisions https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The UK is not that different by comparison. It is a pretty remarkable achievement though, and shows what can be done.
  - rozab 1y ago
tlogan 1y ago
Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars. And they apparently only 21% of daily trips used a private car. Helsinki has about 3x fewer vehicles per capita than the average U.S. city. So it’s not surprising it’s safer since fewer cars mean fewer chances of getting hit by one. Plus their cars are much smaller. In fact, there are probably plenty of U.S. towns and cities with similar number of cars that have zero traffic deaths (quick search says that Jersey City, New Jersey has zero traffic deaths in 2022). So maybe it’s not about urban planning genius or Scandinavian magic. Maybe it’s just: fewer things that can kill you on the road. I wonder how the numbers will change when majority of cars are autonomous.
- rimbo789 1y ago
  Itll for sure get worse once most cars are autonomous and are programmed badly
  - egypturnash 1y ago
    Every time I see a Cybertruck while I'm on my bike I am stunned at how badly that thing is designed, it's got a hood higher than my head and a front that slopes backwards as it goes down, so that anything it hits is just naturally shoved under it, this is a machine built for vehicular homicide. How the fuck did that get allowed on the road at all.
    - levocardia 1y ago
      FWIW Cybertruck (and all other teslas) have a forward collision warning system that can detect pedestrians and automatically brake. Not perfectly of course, but better than other cars. Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.
      - derektank 1y ago
        >Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either. What is the primary cause of increased US pedestrian deaths?
matsemann 1y ago
What kills in my city is mostly trucks. Yes, we need them to get goods to stores. But we don't need the bigass trucks with zero vision to haul goods inside a city. I look forward to Direct Vision Standard being mandatory. Trucks in cities should be built more like city buses. The hut low and with windows all around.
- jcgl 1y ago
  It seems like European trucks with their cab-over-engine design generally have far better visibility than their American counterparts. Not to mention the fact that they’re often smaller and more maneuverable. Where I live in Europe, I’m always impressed to see how well these trucks are able to function in mixed-use areas. Never would have seen this where I grew up in the US.
  - throw-qqqqq 1y ago
    AFAIK the European design is made to minimize the length of the truck. There is an EU limit on the total length of the truck and trailer in Europe (default 18.75m, EMS 25.25 etc.).
    - jcgl 1y ago
      That reduced length is doubtless a big part of how they seem able operate successfully in the urban fabric. It’d be unthinkable with American-sized trucks and trailers. Tangentially, the smaller ambulances and fire trucks here seem so much more sensible than what you see in America. Generally, I’d remark that many city design problems get easier if you can scale down the problem. In this case, the problem of managing and integrating motor vehicles. Tangent to the tangent: I sure don’t miss the ear-splitting sirens you hear in the US. Good god.
      - theluketaylor 1y ago
        North American fire departments are among the biggest blockers of urban road safety improvements here, demanding huge lanes for huge trucks. Those lanes leave tons of space for other drivers, leaving them feeling safe to speed, resulting in more carnage when pedestrians are hit. Those huge trucks are also all custom built chassis and incredibly expensive. European fire departments using customized versions of off the shelf commercial vehicles are so much more sensible for urban spaces and don't need to drive transportation decisions.
nerder92 1y ago
I’m very curious to known how and if that is impacting transplants of organs. I read somewhere that this was an argument against full-self driving cars becoming too safe.
- Taek 1y ago
  That's horrible. That's basically saying "let's make sure a ton of people are dying early so that some percentage of them can be used to save lives" Nobody should ever, ever be in favor of putting people in harms way to increase the availability of organs. At that point you might as well just advocate for a harvest lottery based on how many miles people travel by car.
bravesoul2 1y ago
I wonder if speed control of 50 to 30 km/h makes journeys faster in a city where you will hit traffic and traffic lights anyway. More consistent speeds, less braking.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Removing unnecessary stop lights (they will often become unnecessary when cars can just stop if there are pedestrians crossing, which is much easier from 30 than from 50) and even replacing intersections with roundabouts can make a big difference here (as long as you somehow get a population that understands what a roundabout is, anyway).
  - Maxion 1y ago
    The proliferation of roundabouts over stoplights in Espoo has massively improved traffic in many many areas since I was a kid and it was all stoplights.
pentagrama 1y ago
Through reading the article, I was reminded of many talking points from videos on the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes [1]. Highly recommended if you're interested in urban mobility. [1] https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
hmottestad 1y ago
In Oslo we seem to have a problem with trucks. Just in the past year, two people have been run over and killed by trucks. One was where the truck driver was reversing and another where the truck driver did an illegal right turn over a pavement. Recently there has been a case in the courts where a truck driver didn’t yield to a cyclist and killed her. The narrative from the national truck association was basically that the cyclist was at fault. Even the courts were in on it, only when it got to the highest court did it seem that anyone was willing to blame the truck driver.
zahlman 1y ago
For reference, this is a city roughly comparable to Milwaukee in population (considering all of city/urban/metro numbers).
- ipnon 1y ago
  And Minnesota is a famously Nordic state, many Swedes immigrated in 19th and 20th centuries.
  - quailfarmer 1y ago
    Milwaukee isn’t in Minnesota, Eh!
    - ipnon 1y ago
      Everywhere between Greenwich Village and Russian Hill is the same to me.
      - dredmorbius 1y ago
        <http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Rumsey-Steinberg-New-Yorker-1976.jpg http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Rums...>
- Nemo_bis 1y ago
  > The data shows that of 82 traffic deaths in Milwaukee County last year, 63 were in the city of Milwaukee. https://www.wpr.org/news/milwaukee-county-data-address-traffic-deaths https://www.wpr.org/news/milwaukee-county-data-address-traff... For reference, Milwaukee is roughly comparable to Antwerp in population and size.
efitz 1y ago
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h For us metric-impaired, 30 km/h ~ 19 mph. In the United States, school zones with children present are generally 15-25mph. fit adult humans run at 8-9 mph. If it works for Finns and they like it, great. Americans would not accept speed limits so low.
- RamblingCTO 1y ago
  > If it works for Finns and they like it, great. Americans would not accept speed limits so low. European cities are way denser though. So you have less view of the area because of smaller streets and very densely parked cars. I found the limits in the US comparable to what I'd drive in Germany in cities. Maybe Sedona is a one off, but it felt very familiar. For me, wider roads and better view means I can drive 50-55kmh and that's what the limits were. Smaller and denser street means 25-30kmh which is around 15-20mph? We even have the "you can make a right turn at red after coming to a full stop" with a special sign (a green arrow). So I think the speed limits are ok and it doesn't feel too different for me. What is not ok is the rampant ignorance towards laws. Red light and stop runners in bigger cities and such. Lots of bad drivers out there.
- flyingjoe 1y ago
  Also Americans drive cars that have a much higher probability to kill pedestrians and will go everywhere by car (instead of walking, biking or taking public transport) due to their city architecture.
- kolinko 1y ago
  It’s more about the road width/construction than posted speed limit. If you have a road wide enough to drive 50 and try to post a speed limit of 30 drivers in all countries will complain. If you design a road so that driving above speed limit doesn’t feel safe, drivers will naturally stick to it. I can see it in city center Warsaw - we keep narrowing internal roads and the traffic naturally adjusts to that, whereas if a road is wider/longer/straighter people will drive faster regardless of the speed limit. In US there is a higher disconnect between the posted speed limit and the road width.
- 1y ago
kqr 1y ago
This is one of the things I find difficult about travelling abroad, particularly with children. I'm used to incredibly high safety standards, and when I'm in traffic in many other places in the world it feels like going back a few decades. Genuine question: we have a lot of research on how not to die in traffic (lower speeds around pedestrians, bicyclists stopped ahead of cars in intersections, children in backward facing seats, seatbelts in all seats in all types of vehicles, roundabouts in high-speed intersections, etc.) Why are more parts of the world not taking action on it? These are not very expensive things compared to the value many people assign to a life lost, even in expected value terms.
- lionkor 1y ago
  What more action could be taken on it?
  - wafflemaker 1y ago
    Use the knowledge and implement the best practices.
  - Croak 1y ago
    For example make roads smaller in width. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LIYQRglnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LIYQRglnM
    - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
      But large cars don't fit as comfortably /s
  - rtpg 1y ago
    If you look at this 2023 report[0] you can see the following sort of stats (page 34): between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year: - 60% drop in Lithuania - 50% drop in Poland - ~38% drop in Japan - 20% drop in Germany - 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether changes would work or be applicable for you (and maybe not doing whatever NZ or the US is doing) For Japan's case, they applied a lot of traffic calming[0]. In particular, in 2011 Japan changed up rules to allow for traffic calming through a simple and cheap method: setting the speed limit to 30km/h in various spots. [1] has a summary of the report. Now, one thing I do know about Japan is that their qualification of road deaths is ... dishonest is strong but it's technical. If someone is in a car accident and survives a couple of days, but dies later from complications, that is not counted as a road fataility (IIRC it's a 24 hour window thing). I would like to point something out though. Between 2003 and 2016 car accidents nearly halved (from 940k to 540k). Between 2013 and 2023 fatalities according to their metrics dropped 40 percent. Things can be done [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ [0]: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/12/road-safety-annual-report-2023_f83ca809/8654c572-en.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
PeterStuer 1y ago
Amazing as I have been to Finland many times for work, and (at least some of) the Fins drive like crazy, especially on the back roads through the forests. Imagine being in one of these insane rally car competitions, but it's actually just a Fin driving a minivan.
- qkls 1y ago
  People know their roads and usually there's very little traffic. We are also used to driving in gravel and snow, so you need to learn to adjust your speed accordingly.
j1elo 1y ago
I wanted to read opinions about the cost in time that public transport takes, but it hasn't been commented much. Time is precious (albeit not more than a life! that I agree for sure), and you cannot save it for later, so the problem I have with public transport is the enormous loss of time it is for everyone -- unless the planning is almost flawless. So first we had distances effectively "shortened" with the rise of private transportation, and now we go back to widening them again, in terms of time and practicality of covering longer distances in the modern day-to-day life. Here in my city, even though the public transport is already considered among the best of Europe, and you only hear praise about how well connected everything is... (so you wouldn't expect any radical improvements any time soon) on a Sunday I still take ~16 minutes to cover 14 km (8.7 miles) by car to meet my partner, while the same distance by p.t. is <checks on Google Maps...> 1h20m. So yeah, no thanks. I picked 2 points at random in Helsinki, separated by 14 km, and Gmaps says it's 24 mins by car or 48 mins by public transport, so while it's already double, it feels much more reasonable. Still there is the problem of reducing ability to have a lifestyle that implies many movements. E.g. after visiting my partner I went another 25 km (15.5 miles) to have dinner with my family. On the way back to my home I stopped by a utility store to buy some stuff. All those trips combined would have meant too many hours spent on a subway or bus (checked it: 2h50m and that's giving up on the shopping stop), but combined by car were a mere 1h15m. I get the people who say "I don't have any use for a car, my city is phenomenal", but I also think a subset of those people might simply have assumed (deliberately or not) the limitations it implies, and would possibly achieve more things in their day to day if transporting themselves was a quicker process. Points of view and different opinions are welcome :)
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  Feels like performing this assessment on a Sunday morning is weighting it massively in favour of the car. Busses run a reduced service in most cities, and traffic is far lighter on a weekend than during the week. What do those times look like on a Wednesday evening during the commute home?
  - j1elo 1y ago
    I agree. But for high amount of trips done in a single day, I'd have to use my weekends for sharing examples, as on weekdays the planning is much different due to work. I also obviously know that traffic is dense at certain times, so it's not that roads are always a walk on the park, but for me it's more a matter of knowing the routines and schedules of the city, and using my private transport in the appropriate times is immensely beneficial for the things I usually want to do in a day. On a Wednesday, too many people try to go in a single direction in the morning, and in the opposite direction in the evening, going to/from work, so depending on where one lives, it's clearly better to use the Subway. Although with later crisis and inflation and cost reduction, the public transport has been a bit in a downfall with less frequencies, and I've started to notice that the service is worsening; some mornings the trains are coming fully packed of sweaty people, so the experience must be pushing some people to use their cars and join the masses, for sure...
swader999 1y ago
30 km/hr residential speed limits, narrow streets and a culture of safety conscious people seems to be the main contributors to this. Well done!
knolan 1y ago
Meanwhile here in Ireland the culture is going the opposite direction. There is a clear lack of roads policing here and a recent report has confirmed this[1] with many Gardai simply not interested in doing their job. Our police force is massively under resourced and moral is in the gutter. Meanwhile we have endless PR events “pleading” and “urging” motorists to drive safely, many of which have photo ops with vehicles parked illegally on footpaths. All run by a Road Safety Authority government agency that is utterly incompetent and only seems interested in handing out high viz jackets to school kids and blaming them for being killed by motorists glued to their phones. Which brings me to my pet hate, the utter contempt shown by Irish motorists for those around them, especially pedestrian and cyclist spaces. It’s extremely common for cars to be fully parked up on a footpath even if a parking space is in sight. I’ve had to dodge van drivers driving down the footpath on the Main Street of our capital city because they are too lazy to use the loading bay 50m down the street. This behaviour is accepted by almost everyone. Once a neighbour came around the corner with two wheels of her SUV on the footpath (presumably so she could mount the dipped kerb and park as close to her front door as possible). I had to jump back. I asked her, pleaded even, to not drive on the footpath. Apparently that was rude and she was highly offended. Fuck cars. [1] https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0731/1526401-garda-crowe-report/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0731/1526401-garda-crow...
- ane 1y ago
  Never been more scared in my life when I drove through narrow country roads in Ireland
  - knolan 1y ago
    Where I grew up in rural Ireland there was a haulage company based down a narrow single track road. You’d take your life in your hands going down that road at the best of times, never mind meeting a speeding articulated lorry. Eventually the county council made them build their own access to the main road. The problem isn’t usually the narrow roads however, it’s the drivers everywhere who know there are no consequences for their behaviour.
tsoukase 1y ago
Driving is an extreme responsibility. You carry a 1tn metal object at high speeds a few metres away from human bodies. Accidents happen for a dozen reasons, speed being the most important. All governments should take drastic measures to reduce car accidents. In my countrynthere are still street corners and parts where fatal accidents happen all the time. They could start from there.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  I do this after every long drive: I reflect and think about whether there were any near-misses or potentially unsafe actions during the drive and I write them down. Things like: that one time I forgot to look over the shoulder when I changed lanes and the car behind honked at me; or that one time I passed a bicyclist with only 2 ft separation. Reflecting on these afterwards makes me more aware of how I can improve my own driving safety.
johnklos 1y ago
I was there last week and was amazed at how little traffic there is everywhere. Sure, many people are off for the summer, but even at the more touristy places and even at the airport you weren't waiting for cars. Public transit was simple and quick, even with tram lines closed for construction. The whole experiece shows what's possible when you make public transit actually usable. I'd love to live in a city that does this.
pranavm27 1y ago
I think for cities with more than 5mil population, the best way to avoid road accident would be to restrict human driving in cities and allow only autopilots. Might be more impactful and faster than infra. Though infra has to improve as well atleast on major roads.
1970-01-01 1y ago
I wish we did root cause analysis for major successes. Just as in a major disaster, it's important to detail the key reasons behind the event so lessons are learned, and the drivers remain (un)changed.
margorczynski 1y ago
Most accidents in cities are simple fender benders. The worst are on the roads that interconnect different cities and major areas - especially if they're two-way roads.
vondur 1y ago
Pretty impressive. I doubt you'd find a comparably sized US city with zero traffic deaths in a year.
- weberer 1y ago
  Someone above posted that Jersey City also achieved that in 2022.
  - EasyMark 1y ago
    That's neat, I wonder how they compare on average over a couple decades.
yason 1y ago
It's still kind of all relative. There's a lot of criticism by the local people against Helsinki being too car-friendly. Pedestrian crossings deemed dangerous being simply removed rather than putting traffic lights to tame the cars instead. Large multi-lane roads right outside the densest city centre. Too much space allocated for cars vs pedestrians and other light traffic in the city centre area where the latter outnumber the former by 10x. The only thing that directly supports the zero-death record is the lower speed limits. They used to be 50 km/h some decades ago, then most of the city centre was lowered to 40 km/h and now in the last 10-15 years there's been a proliferation of 30 km/h zones all over the dense areas where there are a lot of pedestrians. This is absolutely good, and given traffic and red lights the average speed was less than that anyway -- it's just that now the drivers no longer have that small stretch of road to accelerate to high speeds towards the next red lights. In the centre, lower speed limits are perfect. Helsinki could've reached zero deaths earlier too if it wasn't for some random truck making a turn and running over a kid or something (I think that was the one traffic death in the previous year, or the one before that). I'd still like to see fewer square metres allocated for cars, elevated pedestrian crossings, roads with less lanes (you can turn 4 lanes into 3 with bike lanes both ways).
sampo 1y ago
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.)

1163 points by DaveZale 1y ago

> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reducing injuries, which newer safety technologies in cars will achieve. > Cooperation between city officials and police has increased, with more automated speed enforcement Mass surveillance under the ever present and weak excuse of “safety”.

moralestapia 1y ago
50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.
- DaveZale 1y ago
  I wonder if the "5 minute city" approach would also help. Just zone the cities so that getting that burger doesn't even involve driving at all, just a brisk walk?
  - masklinn 1y ago
    Of course it would, but mention that and America loses its mind.
  - kennywinker 1y ago
    Good for the environment. Good for your health (more walking). Good for traffic safety (less fatalities). Good for the health care system. Good for your mental health and feeling of connectedness to your community. Good for the economy (more local businesses and less large box monopolies means more employment). And on the cons side… hurts oil execs, national and international retailers, and people who define freedom as having to pay $5 to exxon to get groceries.
- calmbonsai 1y ago
  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.
  - Detrytus 1y ago
    30km/h is actually above the average travel speed you typically achieve in a big city, if you take traffic jams into account.
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      Exactly my point.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      Yes, take Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. 4 or 5 lanes in each direction, 30mph speed limit, and average speed is often about 5-10mph.
  - jerlam 1y ago
    The average commute is not entirely within the streets with the 30 km/h speed limit. City planners usually try to route car traffic away from residential areas and places with large numbers of pedestrians, through arterials, freeways, and the like, which will have a higher speed limit.
    - Muromec 1y ago
      Most of Amsterdam is 30 km, including through roads. But it's Amsterdam through roads, so it's mostly two lines one way, a dedicated tram track in between, trees that separate the road from a bike path and all that. Actual in-district roads where unsupervised 8 year olds are cycling to school and back are 15 km/h.
  - bluecalm 1y ago
    Because it's not an average speed but max speed. Higher max speed in traffic doesn't make an average speed higher because it makes the traffic less smooth. For example in Switzerland on some highways during rush hour the speed limit goes down to 80km/h. They analyzed it and it turns out it's an optimal speed limit for throughput.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > 50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. This seems like a weird argument. If your commute is an hour at 50 km/h then it's an hour and 40 minutes at 30 km/h, every day, each way. That seems like... quite a lot?
  - gorbachev 1y ago
    The speed limit is not 30km/h for the entire trip.
  - Insanity 1y ago
    Which city is an hour long drive at 50km/h? It’s city centre driving that the article talks about.
    - grosun 1y ago
      You can drive through London for an hour in mostly 20mph (~30km/h) zones. Thing is, you're unlikely to be averaging anything even like 20. Even when the limit used to be 30 you weren't either. My old car averaged 16mph, & that included trips out of town at motorway speeds. When the 20 limits were first introduced, lots of people would speed & overtake, but then you'd catch them up at the next traffic light & the one after etc. I know London's quite an extreme case, but all a 20 limit means in a lot of stop/start urban areas is that you travel to the next stop at a speed which is less hazardous should you hit something/someone, with far more time to react to all the unpredictable things which happen in busy urban areas, thus decreasing the chances of hitting anything in the first place. Yeah, it's mildly boring, but driving in cities pretty much always is. Just put on some music or a podcast and take it easy.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    See, the real problem is that people cover too much distances daily. 50km is more than Luxembourg is wide where it's narrowest. They probably don't commute internationally every day there.
    - decimalenough 1y ago
elygre 1y ago
The below article is in Norwegian, but has many references at the end. Apparently people are overwhelmingly happy, so it seems inappropriate to talk about «hurting quality of life». https://www.tiltak.no/d-flytte-eller-regulere-trafikk/d2-regulere-trafikk/fartsgrense-30-km-t-i-store-soner-og-hele-byer-som-tiltak-for-baerekraftig-byutvikling/ https://www.tiltak.no/d-flytte-eller-regulere-trafikk/d2-reg...
- ozim 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - wolfhumble 1y ago
    HN Guidelines: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
deleted 1y ago
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voxl 1y ago
Your argument is really "I'd rather people die then drive through your city slower."????
- lIl-IIIl 1y ago
  I think the argument "I'd rather have a higher risk of dying than do this other unpleasant thing". Which to be fair everyone does all the time (driving habits, eating habits, etc).
  - gorbachev 1y ago
    No, that's not correct. It's: "I'd rather have other people have higher risk of dying than me having to do something I'd kinda of not want to do even though the inconvenience is minimal". Me, me, me, me and me. Fuck the rest.
    - lIl-IIIl 1y ago
      I agree. I also think it's natural and something we do all the time.
- dataflow 1y ago
  You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent here; I'm just saying your rebuttal is a strawman.
  - voxl 1y ago
    Since we're pretending to know logical fallacies, your deflecting with a slippery slope. Lowering the speed limit by 20 mph is not an extreme change, and it if demonstrates to improve car safety then yes blood should be on your hands for not wanting to drive 20 mph slower. Alternatively, driving is sometimes necessary to deliver goods and travel. But the funny thing is, is that I would GLADLY ban cars in all cities and heavily invest in high speed rail. Cars would still be needed in this world, but again it's the relative change. So no, it's not a strawman. If anything it was an ad hom.
jdboyd 1y ago
Google seems to suggest that the secret to fast travel in Helsinki is to take public transit.
GuB-42 1y ago
> 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 (that's probably what is talked about here) are a very targeted from of surveillance, only taking pictures of speeding vehicles. And if it results in traffic deaths going down to zero, that's not a weak excuse. Still not a fan of "automatic speed enforcement" for a variety of reasons, but mass surveillance is not one of them.
- hgomersall 1y ago
  Given i'm trying to advocate for speed cameras local to me, I'd be interested in your variety of reasons if you're willing to share?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > 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 camera is initially installed. It's like banning end-to-end encryption while promising not to do mass surveillance. Just wait a minute and you know what's coming next.
  - hgomersall 1y ago
    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-camera https://www.jenoptik.com/products/road-safety/average-speed-...
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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lbrito 1y ago
Have you considered there are alternative modes of transportation other than personal vehicles? Some of them are even - gasp - public transportation, and quite efficient at what you want (fast travel).
ent 1y ago
As someone who lives and regularly drives in Helsinki, I feel that most kilometers I drive are on roads that allow 80km/h. The 30km/h limits are mostly in residential areas, close to schools and the city center (where traffic is the limiting factor and it's better to take the public transit). So while 30km/h might be the limit for most of the roads, you mostly run into those only in the beginnings and ends of trips.
ath3nd 1y ago
> So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives The average American mind can't comprehend European public transport and not sitting in a traffic jam and smog for 1 hr to go to their workplace. Some of us walk or cycle for 15 min on our commutes, and some of us even ride bicycles with our children to school. It takes me as much time to reach my workplace with a bike as with a car if you take parking, and one of those things makes me fitter and is for free. I guess that's one of the reasons people in the US live shorter and sadder than us Europeans. Being stuck in traffic sure makes people grumpy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...
- Muromec 1y ago
  Take better from both worlds -- 1 hour bike commute and save on healthcare costs too.
  - Saline9515 1y ago
    Very entitled comment. The food worker who has to stand up for the whole day to make your matcha frappuccino could enjoy some rest on the way home.
    - lbschenkel 1y ago
      Another problem that exists only in the US as they don't treat you as a slave and make you stand the whole day elsewhere. People have chairs and do use them.
      - ferongr 1y ago
        Service workers in coffee shops stand all day here in enlightened Europe too.
    - twixfel 1y ago
OfficeChad 1y ago
[dead]
andriamanitra 1y ago
> So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reducing injuries, which newer safety technologies in cars will achieve. Like others have pointed out making road speeds faster barely makes a dent in travel times. The absolute best way to reduce travel times is to build denser cities, which incidentally means less parking, narrower roads, and, most importantly, fewer cars. In a densely populated area it's impossible to match the throughput of even a small bike path with anything built for cars. Safety is just a bonus you get for designing better, more efficient, more livable cities.

Nurbek-F 1y ago

Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...

k_g_b_ 1y ago
https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ 30 km/h is equal to 20 min/10km, 50 km/h is 12 min/10km. So Helsinki city center is at 21km/h travel speeds, metro area at 31km/h. A speed limit of 30 km/h doesn't really affect these travel times much. I can't find 2023 data to compare, however by other data on the net these are very common average speeds for any city in Europe even those with plenty of 50 km/h speed limits. If more people take up public transport, bikes or scooters in fear of an average travel speed reduction of 1-2 km/h - that is a total win for everyone involved including drivers.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Average speed means you have both above and below speeds? When you lower the speed limit, the average will also go down? But yes, in a city cycle time of traffic lights has a larger effect than max speed.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > When you lower the speed limit, the average will also go down? Yes, but by much less than OP might naively expect.
- mikkom 1y ago
  I live in helsinki and nowhere it is 20 kmh that I know of. Might be some random streets in center. And 30km/h streets are smaller living streets that driving that speed comes almost automatically. Major ringways and main roads are 80 kmh btw I have driven in many many countries - Helsinki does not feel slower than any place I have driven, faster in fact because there rarely are traffic jams
  - 1y ago

Tiktaalik 1y ago

Don't let anyone tell you that better things aren't possible

userbinator 1y ago
[flagged]
- beardbound 1y ago
  Sure, but it's also paved with bad intentions, and neutral intentions. I would say that intentions have very little effect on the overall outcome of actions in general. Also good and bad are relative. I would say that the road to outcomes are paved with actions. Not as pithy as the original though.
- vardump 1y ago
  I think that means intentions alone are not enough.
- techterrier 1y ago
  * unnecessarily high speed limits
  - userbinator 1y ago
    [flagged]
- thinkcontext 1y ago
  What are the downsides in this case?
bapak 1y ago
Are you suggesting that facts are useful in public debate? Everyone has an agenda and they will follow it regardless of what you show them.
- NicuCalcea 1y ago

nickserv 1y ago

Great news, good on them. Not only does this make their lives better and safer, but it can help many other cities. Sometimes just knowing that something is possible is enough for people to achieve it.

vincnetas 1y ago
for a start when someone does it, others might start realising that it's even possible and start asking for it.

ashoeafoot 1y ago

The emergency service is just that good now. The police murder crime stats go down too while the stabbings go up.

iambateman 1y ago

As Hank Green said…”no one tells you when you don’t die.” There’s several people walking around Helsinki right now who would not be had they not made safety improvements…we just don’t know who they are.

kennywinker 1y ago
Several people is an understatement. based on population, if it was the US there’s more than 160 people in Helsinki every year NOT killed. So, thousands of people.
- anon191928 1y ago
  Meanwhile, US is losing 100 a day for traffic related days. It's literally like a war
  - mallets 1y ago
    And likely 10x that number injured or 3-4x with permanent life-altering injuries.
  - mbs159 1y ago
    Considering that it was ~8 US soldiers / day during the Vietnam war, it seems much worse
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]

max_ 1y ago

"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.

astura 1y ago
For dumb Americans like me - that 18.641 miles/hr.
- Dig1t 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - para_parolu 1y ago
    Clearly it’s opposite of killing
  - monster_truck 1y ago
    Something tells me you play on your phone while driving anyways
  - sapiogram 1y ago
    Making drivers miserable is part of the intention, they want people to drive less because it's annoying as hell for everyone else.
    - scns 1y ago
      The intention is to prevent accidents. Encountering 30kmh zones in strange places means there have been loads of them.
    - jmkni 1y ago
      That's fine if the public transport is up to scratch, as well as the cycling infrastructure. Where I live it's woefully inadequate making driving the only viable option for most journeys. This has a knock on effect of making cycling down right dangerous in places, because of all the cars + relatively high speed limits, like I wouldn't want to cycle from my house to work, it would be at best unpleasant, and I would be taking my life in my hands on some of the roads.

mzmzmzm 1y ago

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.

jeffbee 1y ago
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.
- Alive-in-2025 1y ago
  How does snap elections solve this problem? You'd have less information if it happened in the next week, especially about less well known candidates. You are suggesting that elections coming in a few months leads to tricking people?
  - sdenton4 1y ago
    It creates conditions for more direct accountability. There's a pretty standard pattern of getting elected, doing the more extreme things, and then giving the voters time to cool off before the election happens.
    - jerlam 1y ago
      It also prevents the election losers from lighting everything on fire on the way out.
      - jdiff 1y ago
        The pattern in the US seems to be to leave time bombs running that only detonate if you don't get re-elected, something that snap elections wouldn't help with.
1y ago

PaulRobinson 1y ago

I was in Helsinki for work a couple of years ago, walking back to my hotel with some colleagues after a few hours drinking (incredibly expensive, but quite nice), beer. It was around midnight and we happened to come across a very large mobile crane on the pavement blocking our way. As we stepped out (carefully), into the road to go around it, one of my Finnish colleagues started bemoaning that no cones or barriers had been put out to safely shepherd pedestrians around it. I was very much "yeah, they're probably only here for a quick job, probably didn't have time for that", because I'm a Londoner and, well, that's what we do in London. My colleague is like "No, that's not acceptable", and he literally pulls out his phone and calls the police. As we carry on on our way, a police car comes up the road and pulls over to have a word with the contractors. They take the basics safely over there in a way I've not seen anywhere else. When you do that, you get the benefits.

Hamuko 1y ago
There actually was an incident last year where a man fell to his death at a construction site in Helsinki. I think the man's companion said there was a small gap in the fencing at the time. https://yle.fi/a/74-20111683 https://yle.fi/a/74-20111683
- seb1204 1y ago
  This is tragic but does not fall under traffic deaths I would assume.
graemep 1y ago
On the other hand the UK as a whole had a lower road traffic realted death rate than Finland did: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023#international-comparisions https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The UK is not that different by comparison. It is a pretty remarkable achievement though, and shows what can be done.
- rozab 1y ago

tlogan 1y ago

Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars. And they apparently only 21% of daily trips used a private car. Helsinki has about 3x fewer vehicles per capita than the average U.S. city. So it’s not surprising it’s safer since fewer cars mean fewer chances of getting hit by one. Plus their cars are much smaller. In fact, there are probably plenty of U.S. towns and cities with similar number of cars that have zero traffic deaths (quick search says that Jersey City, New Jersey has zero traffic deaths in 2022). So maybe it’s not about urban planning genius or Scandinavian magic. Maybe it’s just: fewer things that can kill you on the road. I wonder how the numbers will change when majority of cars are autonomous.

rimbo789 1y ago
Itll for sure get worse once most cars are autonomous and are programmed badly
- egypturnash 1y ago
  Every time I see a Cybertruck while I'm on my bike I am stunned at how badly that thing is designed, it's got a hood higher than my head and a front that slopes backwards as it goes down, so that anything it hits is just naturally shoved under it, this is a machine built for vehicular homicide. How the fuck did that get allowed on the road at all.
  - levocardia 1y ago
    FWIW Cybertruck (and all other teslas) have a forward collision warning system that can detect pedestrians and automatically brake. Not perfectly of course, but better than other cars. Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either.
    - derektank 1y ago
      >Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA, either. What is the primary cause of increased US pedestrian deaths?

matsemann 1y ago

What kills in my city is mostly trucks. Yes, we need them to get goods to stores. But we don't need the bigass trucks with zero vision to haul goods inside a city. I look forward to Direct Vision Standard being mandatory. Trucks in cities should be built more like city buses. The hut low and with windows all around.

jcgl 1y ago
It seems like European trucks with their cab-over-engine design generally have far better visibility than their American counterparts. Not to mention the fact that they’re often smaller and more maneuverable. Where I live in Europe, I’m always impressed to see how well these trucks are able to function in mixed-use areas. Never would have seen this where I grew up in the US.
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
  AFAIK the European design is made to minimize the length of the truck. There is an EU limit on the total length of the truck and trailer in Europe (default 18.75m, EMS 25.25 etc.).
  - jcgl 1y ago
    That reduced length is doubtless a big part of how they seem able operate successfully in the urban fabric. It’d be unthinkable with American-sized trucks and trailers. Tangentially, the smaller ambulances and fire trucks here seem so much more sensible than what you see in America. Generally, I’d remark that many city design problems get easier if you can scale down the problem. In this case, the problem of managing and integrating motor vehicles. Tangent to the tangent: I sure don’t miss the ear-splitting sirens you hear in the US. Good god.
    - theluketaylor 1y ago
      North American fire departments are among the biggest blockers of urban road safety improvements here, demanding huge lanes for huge trucks. Those lanes leave tons of space for other drivers, leaving them feeling safe to speed, resulting in more carnage when pedestrians are hit. Those huge trucks are also all custom built chassis and incredibly expensive. European fire departments using customized versions of off the shelf commercial vehicles are so much more sensible for urban spaces and don't need to drive transportation decisions.

nerder92 1y ago

I’m very curious to known how and if that is impacting transplants of organs. I read somewhere that this was an argument against full-self driving cars becoming too safe.

Taek 1y ago
That's horrible. That's basically saying "let's make sure a ton of people are dying early so that some percentage of them can be used to save lives" Nobody should ever, ever be in favor of putting people in harms way to increase the availability of organs. At that point you might as well just advocate for a harvest lottery based on how many miles people travel by car.

bravesoul2 1y ago

I wonder if speed control of 50 to 30 km/h makes journeys faster in a city where you will hit traffic and traffic lights anyway. More consistent speeds, less braking.

zahlman 1y ago
Removing unnecessary stop lights (they will often become unnecessary when cars can just stop if there are pedestrians crossing, which is much easier from 30 than from 50) and even replacing intersections with roundabouts can make a big difference here (as long as you somehow get a population that understands what a roundabout is, anyway).
- Maxion 1y ago
  The proliferation of roundabouts over stoplights in Espoo has massively improved traffic in many many areas since I was a kid and it was all stoplights.

pentagrama 1y ago

Through reading the article, I was reminded of many talking points from videos on the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes [1]. Highly recommended if you're interested in urban mobility. [1] https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes

hmottestad 1y ago

In Oslo we seem to have a problem with trucks. Just in the past year, two people have been run over and killed by trucks. One was where the truck driver was reversing and another where the truck driver did an illegal right turn over a pavement. Recently there has been a case in the courts where a truck driver didn’t yield to a cyclist and killed her. The narrative from the national truck association was basically that the cyclist was at fault. Even the courts were in on it, only when it got to the highest court did it seem that anyone was willing to blame the truck driver.

zahlman 1y ago

For reference, this is a city roughly comparable to Milwaukee in population (considering all of city/urban/metro numbers).

ipnon 1y ago
And Minnesota is a famously Nordic state, many Swedes immigrated in 19th and 20th centuries.
- quailfarmer 1y ago
  Milwaukee isn’t in Minnesota, Eh!
  - ipnon 1y ago
    Everywhere between Greenwich Village and Russian Hill is the same to me.
    - dredmorbius 1y ago
      <http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Rumsey-Steinberg-New-Yorker-1976.jpg http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Rums...>
Nemo_bis 1y ago
> The data shows that of 82 traffic deaths in Milwaukee County last year, 63 were in the city of Milwaukee. https://www.wpr.org/news/milwaukee-county-data-address-traffic-deaths https://www.wpr.org/news/milwaukee-county-data-address-traff... For reference, Milwaukee is roughly comparable to Antwerp in population and size.

efitz 1y ago

> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h For us metric-impaired, 30 km/h ~ 19 mph. In the United States, school zones with children present are generally 15-25mph. fit adult humans run at 8-9 mph. If it works for Finns and they like it, great. Americans would not accept speed limits so low.

RamblingCTO 1y ago
> If it works for Finns and they like it, great. Americans would not accept speed limits so low. European cities are way denser though. So you have less view of the area because of smaller streets and very densely parked cars. I found the limits in the US comparable to what I'd drive in Germany in cities. Maybe Sedona is a one off, but it felt very familiar. For me, wider roads and better view means I can drive 50-55kmh and that's what the limits were. Smaller and denser street means 25-30kmh which is around 15-20mph? We even have the "you can make a right turn at red after coming to a full stop" with a special sign (a green arrow). So I think the speed limits are ok and it doesn't feel too different for me. What is not ok is the rampant ignorance towards laws. Red light and stop runners in bigger cities and such. Lots of bad drivers out there.
flyingjoe 1y ago
Also Americans drive cars that have a much higher probability to kill pedestrians and will go everywhere by car (instead of walking, biking or taking public transport) due to their city architecture.
kolinko 1y ago
It’s more about the road width/construction than posted speed limit. If you have a road wide enough to drive 50 and try to post a speed limit of 30 drivers in all countries will complain. If you design a road so that driving above speed limit doesn’t feel safe, drivers will naturally stick to it. I can see it in city center Warsaw - we keep narrowing internal roads and the traffic naturally adjusts to that, whereas if a road is wider/longer/straighter people will drive faster regardless of the speed limit. In US there is a higher disconnect between the posted speed limit and the road width.
1y ago

kqr 1y ago

This is one of the things I find difficult about travelling abroad, particularly with children. I'm used to incredibly high safety standards, and when I'm in traffic in many other places in the world it feels like going back a few decades. Genuine question: we have a lot of research on how not to die in traffic (lower speeds around pedestrians, bicyclists stopped ahead of cars in intersections, children in backward facing seats, seatbelts in all seats in all types of vehicles, roundabouts in high-speed intersections, etc.) Why are more parts of the world not taking action on it? These are not very expensive things compared to the value many people assign to a life lost, even in expected value terms.

lionkor 1y ago
What more action could be taken on it?
- wafflemaker 1y ago
  Use the knowledge and implement the best practices.
- Croak 1y ago
  For example make roads smaller in width. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LIYQRglnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LIYQRglnM
  - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    But large cars don't fit as comfortably /s
- rtpg 1y ago
  If you look at this 2023 report[0] you can see the following sort of stats (page 34): between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year: - 60% drop in Lithuania - 50% drop in Poland - ~38% drop in Japan - 20% drop in Germany - 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether changes would work or be applicable for you (and maybe not doing whatever NZ or the US is doing) For Japan's case, they applied a lot of traffic calming[0]. In particular, in 2011 Japan changed up rules to allow for traffic calming through a simple and cheap method: setting the speed limit to 30km/h in various spots. [1] has a summary of the report. Now, one thing I do know about Japan is that their qualification of road deaths is ... dishonest is strong but it's technical. If someone is in a car accident and survives a couple of days, but dies later from complications, that is not counted as a road fataility (IIRC it's a 24 hour window thing). I would like to point something out though. Between 2003 and 2016 car accidents nearly halved (from 940k to 540k). Between 2013 and 2023 fatalities according to their metrics dropped 40 percent. Things can be done [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ [0]: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/12/road-safety-annual-report-2023_f83ca809/8654c572-en.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

PeterStuer 1y ago

Amazing as I have been to Finland many times for work, and (at least some of) the Fins drive like crazy, especially on the back roads through the forests. Imagine being in one of these insane rally car competitions, but it's actually just a Fin driving a minivan.

qkls 1y ago
People know their roads and usually there's very little traffic. We are also used to driving in gravel and snow, so you need to learn to adjust your speed accordingly.

j1elo 1y ago

I wanted to read opinions about the cost in time that public transport takes, but it hasn't been commented much. Time is precious (albeit not more than a life! that I agree for sure), and you cannot save it for later, so the problem I have with public transport is the enormous loss of time it is for everyone -- unless the planning is almost flawless. So first we had distances effectively "shortened" with the rise of private transportation, and now we go back to widening them again, in terms of time and practicality of covering longer distances in the modern day-to-day life. Here in my city, even though the public transport is already considered among the best of Europe, and you only hear praise about how well connected everything is... (so you wouldn't expect any radical improvements any time soon) on a Sunday I still take ~16 minutes to cover 14 km (8.7 miles) by car to meet my partner, while the same distance by p.t. is <checks on Google Maps...> 1h20m. So yeah, no thanks. I picked 2 points at random in Helsinki, separated by 14 km, and Gmaps says it's 24 mins by car or 48 mins by public transport, so while it's already double, it feels much more reasonable. Still there is the problem of reducing ability to have a lifestyle that implies many movements. E.g. after visiting my partner I went another 25 km (15.5 miles) to have dinner with my family. On the way back to my home I stopped by a utility store to buy some stuff. All those trips combined would have meant too many hours spent on a subway or bus (checked it: 2h50m and that's giving up on the shopping stop), but combined by car were a mere 1h15m. I get the people who say "I don't have any use for a car, my city is phenomenal", but I also think a subset of those people might simply have assumed (deliberately or not) the limitations it implies, and would possibly achieve more things in their day to day if transporting themselves was a quicker process. Points of view and different opinions are welcome :)

OtherShrezzing 1y ago
Feels like performing this assessment on a Sunday morning is weighting it massively in favour of the car. Busses run a reduced service in most cities, and traffic is far lighter on a weekend than during the week. What do those times look like on a Wednesday evening during the commute home?
- j1elo 1y ago
  I agree. But for high amount of trips done in a single day, I'd have to use my weekends for sharing examples, as on weekdays the planning is much different due to work. I also obviously know that traffic is dense at certain times, so it's not that roads are always a walk on the park, but for me it's more a matter of knowing the routines and schedules of the city, and using my private transport in the appropriate times is immensely beneficial for the things I usually want to do in a day. On a Wednesday, too many people try to go in a single direction in the morning, and in the opposite direction in the evening, going to/from work, so depending on where one lives, it's clearly better to use the Subway. Although with later crisis and inflation and cost reduction, the public transport has been a bit in a downfall with less frequencies, and I've started to notice that the service is worsening; some mornings the trains are coming fully packed of sweaty people, so the experience must be pushing some people to use their cars and join the masses, for sure...

swader999 1y ago

30 km/hr residential speed limits, narrow streets and a culture of safety conscious people seems to be the main contributors to this. Well done!

knolan 1y ago

Meanwhile here in Ireland the culture is going the opposite direction. There is a clear lack of roads policing here and a recent report has confirmed this[1] with many Gardai simply not interested in doing their job. Our police force is massively under resourced and moral is in the gutter. Meanwhile we have endless PR events “pleading” and “urging” motorists to drive safely, many of which have photo ops with vehicles parked illegally on footpaths. All run by a Road Safety Authority government agency that is utterly incompetent and only seems interested in handing out high viz jackets to school kids and blaming them for being killed by motorists glued to their phones. Which brings me to my pet hate, the utter contempt shown by Irish motorists for those around them, especially pedestrian and cyclist spaces. It’s extremely common for cars to be fully parked up on a footpath even if a parking space is in sight. I’ve had to dodge van drivers driving down the footpath on the Main Street of our capital city because they are too lazy to use the loading bay 50m down the street. This behaviour is accepted by almost everyone. Once a neighbour came around the corner with two wheels of her SUV on the footpath (presumably so she could mount the dipped kerb and park as close to her front door as possible). I had to jump back. I asked her, pleaded even, to not drive on the footpath. Apparently that was rude and she was highly offended. Fuck cars. [1] https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0731/1526401-garda-crowe-report/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0731/1526401-garda-crow...

ane 1y ago
Never been more scared in my life when I drove through narrow country roads in Ireland
- knolan 1y ago
  Where I grew up in rural Ireland there was a haulage company based down a narrow single track road. You’d take your life in your hands going down that road at the best of times, never mind meeting a speeding articulated lorry. Eventually the county council made them build their own access to the main road. The problem isn’t usually the narrow roads however, it’s the drivers everywhere who know there are no consequences for their behaviour.

tsoukase 1y ago

Driving is an extreme responsibility. You carry a 1tn metal object at high speeds a few metres away from human bodies. Accidents happen for a dozen reasons, speed being the most important. All governments should take drastic measures to reduce car accidents. In my countrynthere are still street corners and parts where fatal accidents happen all the time. They could start from there.

kccqzy 1y ago
I do this after every long drive: I reflect and think about whether there were any near-misses or potentially unsafe actions during the drive and I write them down. Things like: that one time I forgot to look over the shoulder when I changed lanes and the car behind honked at me; or that one time I passed a bicyclist with only 2 ft separation. Reflecting on these afterwards makes me more aware of how I can improve my own driving safety.

johnklos 1y ago

I was there last week and was amazed at how little traffic there is everywhere. Sure, many people are off for the summer, but even at the more touristy places and even at the airport you weren't waiting for cars. Public transit was simple and quick, even with tram lines closed for construction. The whole experiece shows what's possible when you make public transit actually usable. I'd love to live in a city that does this.

pranavm27 1y ago

I think for cities with more than 5mil population, the best way to avoid road accident would be to restrict human driving in cities and allow only autopilots. Might be more impactful and faster than infra. Though infra has to improve as well atleast on major roads.

1970-01-01 1y ago

I wish we did root cause analysis for major successes. Just as in a major disaster, it's important to detail the key reasons behind the event so lessons are learned, and the drivers remain (un)changed.

margorczynski 1y ago

Most accidents in cities are simple fender benders. The worst are on the roads that interconnect different cities and major areas - especially if they're two-way roads.

vondur 1y ago

Pretty impressive. I doubt you'd find a comparably sized US city with zero traffic deaths in a year.

weberer 1y ago
Someone above posted that Jersey City also achieved that in 2022.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  That's neat, I wonder how they compare on average over a couple decades.

yason 1y ago

It's still kind of all relative. There's a lot of criticism by the local people against Helsinki being too car-friendly. Pedestrian crossings deemed dangerous being simply removed rather than putting traffic lights to tame the cars instead. Large multi-lane roads right outside the densest city centre. Too much space allocated for cars vs pedestrians and other light traffic in the city centre area where the latter outnumber the former by 10x. The only thing that directly supports the zero-death record is the lower speed limits. They used to be 50 km/h some decades ago, then most of the city centre was lowered to 40 km/h and now in the last 10-15 years there's been a proliferation of 30 km/h zones all over the dense areas where there are a lot of pedestrians. This is absolutely good, and given traffic and red lights the average speed was less than that anyway -- it's just that now the drivers no longer have that small stretch of road to accelerate to high speeds towards the next red lights. In the centre, lower speed limits are perfect. Helsinki could've reached zero deaths earlier too if it wasn't for some random truck making a turn and running over a kid or something (I think that was the one traffic death in the previous year, or the one before that). I'd still like to see fewer square metres allocated for cars, elevated pedestrian crossings, roads with less lanes (you can turn 4 lanes into 3 with bike lanes both ways).

sampo 1y ago

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.)