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Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year

(www.helsinkitimes.fi)
1163 points DaveZale | 2 comments | 30 Jul 25 16:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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SilverElfin ◴[30 Jul 25 16:55 UTC] No.44736599[source]▶
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h.

So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reducing injuries, which newer safety technologies in cars will achieve.

> Cooperation between city officials and police has increased, with more automated speed enforcement

Mass surveillance under the ever present and weak excuse of “safety”.

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moralestapia ◴[30 Jul 25 17:42 UTC] No.44737241[source]▶
50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference.

If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.

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calmbonsai ◴[30 Jul 25 18:37 UTC] No.44737949[source]▶
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
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wpm ◴[31 Jul 25 03:37 UTC] No.44742103[source]▶
You don’t need to be either.

Suppose a trip is 5km.

At 50km/h, that trip takes 6 minutes.

At 30km/h, that trip takes 10 minutes.

In practice, this naive way of calculating this doesn’t even reflect reality, because odds are the average speed of a driver through Helsinki was around 30km/h anyways. Going 50km/h between red lights doesn’t actually make your trip faster.

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1. rudolftheone ◴[04 Aug 25 07:59 UTC] No.44783128[source]▶
I'm not an advocate for speeding in the cities, but this example is really bad - it says my trip time will be extended by 66%! For a really short one, it doesn't matter, but when you drive 40 minutes initially, it's really unacceptable for most.
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2. wpm ◴[05 Aug 25 18:20 UTC] No.44802067[source]▶
> it says my trip time will be extended by 66%

Yeah 66% is a higher number, so it seems worse if you literally don't think about it at all.

Its 4 minutes. If its that important your car would have lights and sirens on it.

And it isn't a bad example, unless things are quite different in Finland, the vast majority of car trips taken in the US are under 6 miles (~10km). If you're taking a 40 minute trip on crowded, surface streets in a dense city and not going on a motorway, that's your choice, and frankly, quite selfish of you to not expect to go slow. I frankly don't care how long it takes you to get somewhere in a huge car through a city going faster means endangering other people.