Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

A 30 km/h limit and decline in driving means zero people have to die. If enforcing scooters meant zero people have to die, I'm not sure what the objection is, truly.

Scooters kill people too (often the drivers themselves but not always).

The problem with escooters is that basically any accident is "bad" since you have no protection while you toodle along at 15.5mph. Not just slamming into the ground, but into street furniture, trees, building, bikes - you name it. A helmet (which no one wears) is not going to help you if you wrap your abdomen around a solid metal bench at 15.5mph. The real world has a lot of hard sticky-out bits (and perhaps ironically cars don't due to crash testing rules, so I guess crash I to a stationary car is your best bet)

It's a bloodbath in London.

Maybe enforce pedestrian crossings instead. Zero deaths without annoying anybody.

They had pedestrian crossings already, and that was not the deciding factor. It was the speed limit that kept people alive.

If people like you getting annoyed by having to drive slower is the price for just one person not dying in traffic, that’s already a win in my book.

Do you think people rightfully crossing crosswalks never get hit, or do you include the cars in the equation too? What about every other type traffic accident that could be prevented from being fatal by just lowering the speed?

Not sure I’d say blood bath but here’s some data

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...

> The problem with escooters is that basically any accident is "bad"

Factually false. Out of well over 1000 annual collosions in GB in 2023 there were a a handful of deaths but they were all the e-scooter riders.

> The real world has a lot of hard sticky-out bits (and perhaps ironically cars don't due to crash testing rules,

The most dangerous parts of the streets for scooters are the cars, not the other "sticky-out" bits that don't move and are pretty easy to avoid if you aren't drunk or on your phone or not looking forward. Less than a quarter of e-scooter accidents involved no other vehicle and I'd be willing to bet those tended to be less serious.

E-scooters are great because they aren't as dangerous to other people. People get to make their own choices about risk tolerance, speed and gear all while presenting less hazard to the public when they make bad choices.

> you have no protection

The protection you get in a car comes from the added mass that also makes you so much more dangerous to other road users.

I don't know about the situation in your city, but there problem really is that a comparatively large portion of e-scooter drivers are either idiots or drunk and idiots.

At least here they should follow same traffic rules as bikes, but it's very common to see them driving amid pedestrians. Of course, no gear present whatsoever. The average scooter accident is also more serious than the average cycling accident with head injuries being particularly common. Even if the typical victim is the driver himself, that does not make e-scooters great for the city.

We already have city bikes here and it would be societally much preferable if people were just using those instead.

It takes almost no effort to find stories like https://globalnews.ca/news/10986468/robie-street-halifax-ped... .

(For reference, Halifax, Nova Scotia is maybe a quarter of the size of Helsinki.)

That is exactly the danger a pedestrian faces when a car drives into them. At least with a scooter the driver takes on more of the risk and has more skin in the game.

Yeah, I personally would choose a bike over a scooter. However I would much rather have an drunk idiot on a scooter than driving a car.

No doubt. It's just that people do not feel as seriously about scootering drunk as they do about driving drunk (and of course, they should not. It's obviously not the same level of risk.) The rental scooters seem provide an easy avenue for the drunk to drive around at 20 kph instead of just meandering along the sidewalk in a leisurely manner, or taking a cab.

Sometimes some people seem to need to learn lessons the hard way. It's much better if that hard lesson comes on a scooter rather than in a car.

If we can get people to go to bars/etc on rental scooters then they won't have a car to get back in when they are drunk. Ideally they walk, bus or taxi at that point (new public education campaigns can help with this), but even if they get on a rental scooter, that's still a win for public safety.

I'll point out that it is much easier to take a taxi home and leave a rental scooter at a bar then to have to leave your car there overnight and go back the next day.