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?

You could create a dashboard.

Most of the problem is human behavior. Look at the US, 40k annual fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Many US states, counties, and municipalities have a formal "Vision Zero" program. It unfortunately hasn't resulted in much improvement in the US. Some think the pandemic had an effect.

https://zerodeathsmd.gov/resources/crashdata/crashdashboard/

https://www.visionzerosf.org/about/vision-zero-in-other-citi...

I agree vision zero hasn’t been particularly effective in the US. In Boston, we have roads like Jamaicaway where the speed limit was lowered to 25mph and people regularly drive 50. Speed limits are functionally unenforced.

Human behavior as a focal point of blame is skewered in a book that just came out.

https://a.co/d/21guqjp argues that traffic engineering and design is what has resulted in the much higher death rate in the US than its peer countries. If lanes are wide (3.5m or larger), people will drive as fast as is enforced.

Block the residential streets to through car traffic. Simple.

And degrade the quality of life of every resident who regularly has a car trip living in one of those neighborhoods by making them circle 1-3 blocks of 1-ways and right only intersections (or whatever other solution you implement for making it worse to drive through).

You're basically saying that thousands of people ought to have their lives made marginally worse so you can claim success because the city loses 1.24 lives per year to cars instead of the 1.39 before the change or something like that. This entire attitude is predicated on the idea that experts working at the statistical level know better than the people who have to live it. That's preposterous. Get bent.