Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

I was in Helsinki for work a couple of years ago, walking back to my hotel with some colleagues after a few hours drinking (incredibly expensive, but quite nice), beer.

It was around midnight and we happened to come across a very large mobile crane on the pavement blocking our way. As we stepped out (carefully), into the road to go around it, one of my Finnish colleagues started bemoaning that no cones or barriers had been put out to safely shepherd pedestrians around it. I was very much "yeah, they're probably only here for a quick job, probably didn't have time for that", because I'm a Londoner and, well, that's what we do in London.

My colleague is like "No, that's not acceptable", and he literally pulls out his phone and calls the police. As we carry on on our way, a police car comes up the road and pulls over to have a word with the contractors.

They take the basics safely over there in a way I've not seen anywhere else. When you do that, you get the benefits.

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-casua... The UK is not that different by comparison.

It is a pretty remarkable achievement though, and shows what can be done.

That'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.