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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
by 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 agoItll for sure get worse once most cars are autonomous and are programmed badly
- egypturnash 1y agoEvery 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 agoFWIW 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?
- sosborn 1y agoMy money would go on mobile phone usage.
- jeromegv 1y agoEvery countries in the world got cellphones. Many saw a drop in fatalies on the road, others it went up (US). Cellphones surely don’t help and are awful but once you hit someone the size of the car (and speed!) matters on the outcome and cars are bigger in the US.
- jamesblonde 1y ago"Large cars are not the primary driver of increased pedestrian deaths in the USA" Evidence free claim. Sometimes correlation indicates causation.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wyre 1y agoIncorrect. Light trucks account for 54% of pedestrian fatalities compared to passenger cars at 37%. Impossible for more than half to not be considered the primary cause. https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalities-state-2024-preliminary-data-january-december https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...
- globalise83 1y agoIt's not allowed in Europe, and I very much doubt it ever will be.
- hobbescotch 1y agoHave you been to Finland? It is a very safety conscious culture. This isn’t just some fluke.
- eCa 1y agoThe question to ask is, why are there less cars? Public transport. As an example, just the tram network had 57 million trips in 2019. The metro, 90+ million trips annually. The commuter rail network? 70+ million. (Source: wikipedia) So yes. Urban planning has a hand or two in it.
- silvestrov 1y agoHow people in Helsinki get to work: Car: 23% ; PublicTransport: 47% ; Walk: 12% ; Bike: 15% How pupils in Helsinki get to school: Car: 7% ; PublicTransport: 32% ; Walk: 45% ; Bike: 14% source: https://www.hel.fi/static/liitteet/kaupunkiymparisto/julkaisut/esitteet/esite-01-24-en.pdf https://www.hel.fi/static/liitteet/kaupunkiymparisto/julkais...
- tlogan 1y agoI completely agree. Though implementing it is far easier said than done. Here in San Francisco (and much of California), things are incredibly complicated. Take this example: in SF, there’s a policy that prevents kids from attending elementary school in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they’re assigned to schools on the opposite side of town. In places that are practically inaccessible without a car. And there are no school buses. Changing that policy has proven nearly impossible. But if kids could actually attend local schools, biking or walking would be realistic options. That one shift alone could make a huge difference in reducing car dependence.
- pantalaimon 1y agoWhat kind of policy is that based on? Seems very counter intuitive, aren't are supposed to meet your classmates after school?
- derektank 1y agoIt was a decision intended to foster racial and socioeconomic diversity, adopted in 2020[1]. It will likely be reversed in the 2026/2027 school year[2] [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WxAVUXfKCdhSlFa8rYZqTBC-ZmzCVj3p/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WxAVUXfKCdhSlFa8rYZqTBC-Zmz... [2] https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-policy/student-assignment-changes https://www.sfusd.edu/schools/enroll/student-assignment-poli...
- senorrib 1y agoInteresting how you provided a counter example for the “Scandinavian genious” hypothesis and all comments are simply deflecting that and restating unrelated stats.
- ricardobeat 1y agoBecause having less cars is both intentional and a result of public policies, and this is covered in the article.
- bkettle 1y agoAre you referring to the Jersey City mention when you say counterexample? It’s excellent and absolutely worth celebrating that a US city was able to achieve this for a year, but just like Helsinki’s car-use stats, it was also no fluke: not only is Jersey City in the most transit-friendly metro area in the country (NYC), but they’ve also had a huge focus on trying to achieve vision zero and (unlike many other cities who claim to also be trying to achieve vision zero) have been aggressively implementing changes to street design that improve safety and encourage non-car modes of transport, often by slowing down cars [1, 2]. And unfortunately, Jersey City had deaths on their city roads again in 2023 and 2024 [3]. We need to be doing everything we can to study places that are doing things well, because we have a long way to go. 1. https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762 https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli... 2. https://youtu.be/gwu1Cf8G9u8?si=2WWsj5EvTs8CTU8T https://youtu.be/gwu1Cf8G9u8?si=2WWsj5EvTs8CTU8T 3. https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_6189660/File/Community/Transportation/Vision%20Zero/Jersey%20City%20Vision%20Zero%20Annual%20Report%202024%20Final_pages.pdf https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server...
- notTooFarGone 1y agoThis is the most "p-hacking" thing ever. If you take a hundred US cities over 20 years you have 2000 data points. The probability of outliers to cherry pick from is quite high. Doesn't mean that jersey is not doing things right but please don't act like it's the shining example of vehicular safety. It's not comparable to Nordic countries at all.
- stetrain 1y ago> Maybe Helsinki isn’t special: just fewer cars That is special for a modern western city, and is likely the result of intentional policy and urban planning. Many cities base most of their development around fitting in more cars, not reducing them. And that comes with lots of negative statistics related to car density. You’re right that it’s not magic. Other cities could likely achieve similar results with similar policies. They are just very resistant to that change.
- panick21_ 1y ago> not about urban planning genius or Scandinavian magic Fewer cars IS THE MAGIC and fewer cars IS GREAT URBAN planning.
- sitkack 1y agoCars are obviously the problem. All cars, small cars, large cars, gas cars, electric cars, all cars are the problem.
- yard2010 1y agoYes. In the future there will be no cars and no deaths related to them. We just live in the 1800' of our time.
- arrrg 1y agoThis is a nonsensical generalization. This is the observation: we massively overshoot in terms of the role (space, infrastructure) we assign to cars, especially in densely populated areas. If we can create viable alternatives to driving we can make these places much, much more enjoyable. Quieter, nicer to be around, more human scale, more convenient. That’s all. Nowhere in there is any claim that cars aren’t immensely useful. In less densely populated people. For people with disabilities. Etc. Why can’t we have the nice things? And yeah, the nice things do include walkable cities like we had them in 19th century. Sometimes and in some places to a very limited extent the past with some modern conveniences (like trams, modern bicycles) was better.
- Mawr 1y agoI don't think bicycles, trams, buses and trains existed back then in the way they do now.
- goopypoop 1y agoI bet horse-related deaths have dropped
- Sharlin 1y agoThere used to be dozens of traffic deaths per year in Helsinki back in the 60s. When there were fewer people and much fewer cars. Most of the dead were pedestrians (as opposed to outside urban zones where motorists mostly tend to kill themselves and any unfortunate passengers). Do NOT dare to downplay this achievement. It is the result of decades of work and changing attitudes of what is acceptable.
- timeon 1y ago> Plus their cars are much smaller. Not smaller then in other European places. It is just that US cars are extremely huge.
- airspresso 1y agoExactly. US is the outlier vs the rest of the world when it comes to car size.
- CalRobert 1y agoBut... fewer cars and fewer trips using a car is literally the thing that makes it better.
- Wilder7977 1y agoAchieving a low amount of trips done by car is already something that doesn't happen magically, and is the result of policy decisions (e.g., invest in public transport). Then there are speed limits, road designs etc.
- andrepd 1y ago> So maybe it’s not about urban planning That's ridiclulous, there's fewer cars because there is good urban planning... An infinite number of cities in the world are less dense than Helsinki but are traffic-ridden shitholes because they are developed with only The Car in mind.
- EasyMark 1y agobut it would probably be hard to find an American city of just 10k people that didn't have a few car/car-related deaths a year, DUI, pedestrians, bicyclists--something. Helsinki is 660,000 people