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> 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
by 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 ago50 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 agoI 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 agoOf course it would, but mention that and America loses its mind.
- kennywinker 1y agoGood 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 agoI 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 ago30km/h is actually above the average travel speed you typically achieve in a big city, if you take traffic jams into account.
- moralestapia 1y agoExactly my point.
- SoftTalker 1y agoYes, 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 agoThe 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 agoMost 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 agoBecause 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 agoThe speed limit is not 30km/h for the entire trip.
- Insanity 1y agoWhich city is an hour long drive at 50km/h? It’s city centre driving that the article talks about.
- grosun 1y agoYou 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 agoSee, 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 agoThe 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 agoHN Guidelines: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- voxl 1y agoYour argument is really "I'd rather people die then drive through your city slower."????
- lIl-IIIl 1y agoI 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 agoNo, 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 agoI agree. I also think it's natural and something we do all the time.
- dataflow 1y agoYou 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 agoSince 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 agoGoogle 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 agoGiven 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 agoThere'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[deleted]
- lbrito 1y agoHave 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 agoAs 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 agoTake better from both worlds -- 1 hour bike commute and save on healthcare costs too.
- Saline9515 1y agoVery 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 agoAnother 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 agoService 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.