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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-casualt
by 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 agoI would guess Finnish deaths are inflated by the rural rallying culture though, hard to compare
- pavlov 1y agoYes, in rural Finland 17-year-old boys who just got their license regularly end up killing themselves and their friends by reckless driving. I believe there is cultural issue with boys’ upbringing. Recently my 8-year-old daughter was spending a week with her mother’s relatives in middle Finland. One day she sent me a picture of an old Volvo in a ditch. “Guess what dad, my cousin drove it off the road and I was in the car!” The cousin in question is ten years old. I was absolutely furious that they let the boy drive a real car and that my little girl was in it with no adult supervision. But my in-laws didn’t see a problem: “He was only driving on a private road — there’s no risk — everybody does it here — this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving.” In my opinion this is how you train teenagers to think that safety and rules don’t matter, and that they’re invulnerable. But I can’t change these people’s views, so all I can do is try to make sure my daughter doesn’t ride with her cousins from now on.
- _3u10 1y agoAt least your daughter had a good time.
- throwaway9832 1y ago10 is plenty old enough to drive under supervision. We used to send people to war at 16. The idea of stopping people from driving until 18 is infantilisation.
- strken 1y agoThere's a big difference between driving a car around the farm at 20kmph to collect wood and flipping your dad's Volvo into a ditch. We were driving from a relatively young age, maybe 13 or 14, but only in a paddock and with some degree of adult supervision.
- muteh 1y agoRead your comment. Read the parent. Yeah, we used to kill kids. Personally I think we shouldn’t have.
- throwaway9832 1y ago[flagged]
- adrianN 1y agoWe also used to send children to work in the mines. That does not make it a good idea.
- capernaum 1y agoFor children working in the mines the choice was not between working or chilling in the mall. It was work or imminent death from starvation. So, yes, it was a good idea to work. It still is in less prosperous parts of the world.
- Sharlin 1y agoI can definitely see why you’re using a throwaway account.
- throwaway9832 1y ago
- lettergram 1y agoThere’s a reason rural folks have a higher fatality rate. That said, at least in the US, there’s the presumption that those who live more rural are more rugged, capable, and harder working. I used to live in Chicago and SF. I’ve since moved to rural Tennessee. I can tell you everyone, including my kids, now have learned to drive our tractor. Granted I’m with them, but we had my 4-5 year old moving hay and they were helping me change oil. I understand the concern, but everyone learns through doing. There’s definitely danger in that, and you should try to limit risk. At the same time; not teaching them is also high risk in that environment, as they’ll do it anyway with friends later.
- tormeh 1y agoA car is not a tractor. The risks are really very different, and generally don't relate to speed.
- ImprovedSilence 1y agoEven still, I suspect tractor deaths and injuries are far far higher per driver than for cars. Tractors are very capable, but it's also very very easy to get in a dangerous situation with them.
- erikerikson 1y ago> those who live more rural are more rugged, capable, and harder working. As someone who grew up rural and still has roots but moved to the city for work, this holds with a high probability.
- Symbiote 1y agoIn the UK I think this would be illegal. Children must be at least 13 to operate some limited machinery. Still, farmers think they know better and about one child a year dies from it.
- watwut 1y agoRural superiority complex is very real. Rural people can be extremely condescending and openly feel much superior then people in the cities. Large politics is such that insulting city people is completely acceptable, but dare you say anything about rural people.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoThere's definitely a cultural difference but whether it's an issue is debatable.
- fabioborellini 1y agoFinnish rural boys rarely have other personality traits than their favourite car brand. It’s usually BMW or Volvo, and friendships must follow the shared brand following. Someone driving a Nissan Micra should starve to death, according to both camps.
- lawlessone 1y agoSounds like Windows and Linux users talking about Macs
- afiori 1y agoor Linux and Macs users talking about Windows, or Macs and Windows users talking about Linux
- 2000UltraDeluxe 1y agoFavourite tractor brand is usually more important, though. :D
- bluedino 1y agoThe urban America equivalent are teenage to twenty something males crashing Dodge Chargers at high speeds at 2:00am
- BirAdam 1y agoIn the South, this is an issue everywhere, not just cities. Any vehicle, even mildly capable, will be wrecked by young men traveling way too fast, on dangerous roads, and often inebriated.
- teiferer 1y ago> this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving. Because that Y chromosome makes all the difference. /s
- heavenlyblue 1y agoI saw tourists parking cars in New Zealand and, because the road is on an incline sideways, some cars would fall into a ditch. Was the car driven recklessly or was it a parking/reversing mistake? This kind of thinking just brings unnecessary racism. You would think that UK would have a lower rate of traffic incidents with it's "safe" approach to driving but numbers speak the opposite.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 1y agoRural Finnish driving culture is insane, to the extent that drunk driving often is considered socially acceptable, and something every kid does. Luckily, the bulk of the incidents dont involve drivers hurting others. The country road rally drivers are rarely as bad as busy hatchback-drivers on a main road though. Especially the ones with kids in the back and on their way home during rush hours.
- specialist 1y agoCan the urge to drive (fast) be channeled into cart racing? Or whatever the amateur rally circuit equivalent is?
- rjsw 1y agoTBF, that happens in the UK as well.
- sophia01 1y ago> The UK is not that different by comparison. Do note that the UK is 15.6x as dense as Finland, and the climate is quite different: e.g. in Helsinki (southermost city) mean daily temperature is below freezing point 4/12 months of the year (very consequential for driving). E.g. in Scotland even the mean daily minimum does not cross freezing point in any month. OECD data has Finland at 0.36 fatalities per 10k vehicles vs 0.41 in the UK. https://www.itf-oecd.org/road-safety-dashboard https://www.itf-oecd.org/road-safety-dashboard
- throwaway9832 1y ago[flagged]
- Teever 1y agoYou seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving? Is that a fair characterization of your comment?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoPeople widely believe this about stick-shift cars, too. I don't, but people do.
- threatofrain 1y agoAnd narrow lanes make drivers more cautious.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoPeople not used to it. On my school run some will do 20-60 depending on where along the road and how narrow and what the sight lines are. Others will just do 20-30 for the whole 10 miles. At a couple of locations there’s morning room but lots of room to overtake (as long as nothing comes the other way), the road is nearly wide enough to have a line down the middle. Most drivers are fine but some of the 20-30 lot will swerve all over the road to try to block overtaking. These aren’t super narrow, you can get a tractor or hgv down the whole road, and even at some passing places get one past another.
- chasd00 1y ago2hrs ago I was on switchbacks coming up into the mountains outside of San Jose Costa Rica. I come around one and bam there’s a 7-9 year old girl walking up the road in the middle of the lane. How the mountain roads in Costa Rica don’t run red with blood I don’t know.
- Tomis02 1y agoYou could share the road with others, you know? You weren't born behind the wheel.
- sfn42 1y agoThis is why you always need to adjust your speed so that you are capable of comfortably stopping in the area of road that you can see clearly. If you're going around a blind turn or over a hill or any other situation where you can't see very far ahead, you need to slow down so that you can safely react to surprises in the road. If your driving puts you in situations where a girl walking in the road exposes you, then you are not driving safely. You should always be able to handle that situation, if you can't then you are going too fast. This goes for any road, including highways, and any vehicle, including fully loaded semi trucks and bicycles, go-karts, whatever. The only situation in which this does not apply is in racing on closed tracks. The law in most places agrees - if you had hit that girl then you would have been held liable. Thats not to say the pedestrian wasn't acting recklessly, but considering the pedestrian was a child we can't really blame them. An adult should know better than putting themselves in front of a fast moving vehicle though. Most pedestrians involved in accidents could have avoided it by paying attention. It's generally the people who just walk out in front of moving cars that get hit by cars. A car hitting pedestrians on the side walk is much rarer. I look both ways before crossing a one way street and I never walk into a pedestrian crossing until I am sure that the oncoming car is stopping. I realize that strategy doesn't work everywhere in the world, in Bangkok you pretty much just walk into traffic and hope that a few dozen motorists see and avoid you. But in many places cars will stop to let pedestrians cross.
- globular-toast 1y agoThat's because in the UK people just don't walk, except in certain places. You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example. But in other places people just won't walk there. One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.
- prmoustache 1y ago> One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars. That is the opposite actually.
- occz 1y ago>One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars. A patently absurd claim that holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever. The whole nation of the U.S disproves it, for one.
- globular-toast 1y agoWe have far better roads, vehicle testing and driver training than the US.
- zimpenfish 1y ago> You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example. I'm assuming you mean "blocking the pavement without signage" there? Although even that is a stretch because I can assure you that blocking the pavement with cranes, commercial vehicles, personal vehicles, etc. happens all over the damn place in London, with and without signage.
- chrz 1y agobeacuse traffic is so bad that no cars are really moving on city streets. The artificial safety of overly putting more lights than necessary is slowing down whole city and make it safer this way. The poeple and culture as whole is even less safety aware because of over governance and warning signs everywhere
- fmbb 1y agoThere is nothing artificial about that. The more you annoy drivers of cars and the less efficient you make streets for car traffic and the more you force them to not trust their surroundings, the safer the streets are for everyone.
- ifwinterco 1y agoIn theory but in London everyone is driving in a state of incandescent rage due to the non stop traffic lights and restrictions and people sometimes end up doing insane things because they've basically lost their head. There are limits to the "deliberately piss everyone off" strategy
- louthy 1y agoThey’re driving at 20mph because the whole of London is a 20mph zone now. So incandescence or not, accidents are still relatively low for a major metropolis.
- bobthepanda 1y agoUsually roundabouts are way better for this than excessive stoplighting. With stoplighting you run the risk of basically “the boy who cried wolf” and people becoming numb and starting to run reds.
- Dylan16807 1y agoI can't figure out how this would happen. Inside a city I'd expect even with excessive lights there'd still be plenty of cross traffic at red lights and you wouldn't start to think of them as useless and runnable. And inside or outside a city, I expect lights to be equipped with car detection so that main paths stay green whenever possible and when there's no cross traffic it's basically the same as not having a light.