Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

They lowered the speed limit by 5mph (8 km/h) throughout the entire town I live near. As far as I can tell, it just means that people now drive 15mph over the speed limit when they previously were driving 10mph over.

The last fatality on the major road closest to my house involved someone driving over 60mph in a 45 zone.

There was also a near-miss of a pedestrian on the sidewalk when a driver going over 100mph lost control of their vehicle. That driver still has a license.

I don't think lowering the speed limit to 40 (as they recently did) would have prevented that.

Yes, that's why the second half of the equation is structural traffic calming: you both need to lower the speed limit and induce lower driving speeds. The US has historically not done a great job at the latter, and has mostly treated it as an enforcement problem (speeding cameras and tickets) rather than an environmental one (making the driver feel uncomfortable going over the speed limit, e.g. by making roads narrower, adding curves, etc.). You need both, but environmental calming is much more effective on the >95% of the populace that speeds because it "feels right," and not because they're sociopathically detached.

That's slowly changing, like in NYC with daylighting initiatives. But it takes a long time.

(European cities typically don't have this same shape of problem, since the physical layout of the city itself doesn't encourage speeding. So they get the environmental incentive structure already, and all they need to do is lower the speed limit to match.)

You also need law enforcement and/or narrower lanes.

> the >95% of the populace that speeds because it "feels right," and not because they're sociopathically detached.

What about driving over the speed limit makes one "sociopathically detached"?

The part where they are deliberately choosing to endanger their fellow citizens?

Damage scales with the square of speed. Speed limits aren't put in place for fun, they are there to reduce the number of accidents. A speed limit says "Accidents are likely, slow down to reduce the severity of them". Hitting a pedestrian at 30 km/h means they'll be injured, hitting a pedestrian at 50 km/h means they'll be dead. If you're speeding, you're essentially saying that you arriving a few seconds faster at your destination is more important than someone else dying.

On top of that, a difference in speed greatly increases the number of accidents. If everyone drives at 30 km/h, that one person at 50 km/h will constantly be tailgating and overtaking. That is far more likely to result in accidents than simply following the car in front of you at a safe distance.

The enclosed nature of the car is what does that.

I think you misread this. The point was that >95% of people drive over the speed limit because it feels right, not because they’re sociopaths. Making it feel wrong to speed is sufficient for most people.