Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

This is one of the things I find difficult about travelling abroad, particularly with children. I'm used to incredibly high safety standards, and when I'm in traffic in many other places in the world it feels like going back a few decades.

Genuine question: we have a lot of research on how not to die in traffic (lower speeds around pedestrians, bicyclists stopped ahead of cars in intersections, children in backward facing seats, seatbelts in all seats in all types of vehicles, roundabouts in high-speed intersections, etc.)

Why are more parts of the world not taking action on it? These are not very expensive things compared to the value many people assign to a life lost, even in expected value terms.

What more action could be taken on it?

If you look at this 2023 report[0] you can see the following sort of stats (page 34):

between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year:

- 60% drop in Lithuania

- 50% drop in Poland

- ~38% drop in Japan

- 20% drop in Germany

- 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US

so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether changes would work or be applicable for you (and maybe not doing whatever NZ or the US is doing)

For Japan's case, they applied a lot of traffic calming[0]. In particular, in 2011 Japan changed up rules to allow for traffic calming through a simple and cheap method: setting the speed limit to 30km/h in various spots. [1] has a summary of the report.

Now, one thing I do know about Japan is that their qualification of road deaths is ... dishonest is strong but it's technical. If someone is in a car accident and survives a couple of days, but dies later from complications, that is not counted as a road fataility (IIRC it's a 24 hour window thing).

I would like to point something out though. Between 2003 and 2016 car accidents nearly halved (from 940k to 540k). Between 2013 and 2023 fatalities according to their metrics dropped 40 percent.

Things can be done

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ [0]: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...