- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
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Smarter design and better enforcement
Street design has also played a key role. Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure has been significantly upgraded in recent years. In addition, cooperation with traffic police has intensified and more traffic cameras and automated enforcement systems have been introduced.
“Public transport in Helsinki is excellent, which reduces car use, and with it, the number of serious accidents,” Utriainen noted.
Yep, that would do it.
Especially road design (for example avoiding those deadly 4-way intersections the US loves so much) as well enforcing speed limits around danger areas like schools, and most importantly, reduce the number of cars by providing better alternatives…
An impressive feat.
Also parking in the city centre is expensive as hell. It’s cheaper and more convenient to park for free further out and take a train in.
Ah, 🤓👆
But did the lack of deaths make them any money? 🤔Take that, communists.
Yes, they saved the businesses having to train new employees to replace the dead ones.
Great news, congratulations Helsinki.
They mention electric scooters having their own challenges and solutions without going into any details. Do they treat them as bikes or bikes? Do they get their own lanes? The article ended too soon!
My wag: they’re treated like bikes or skateboards or even pedestrians, but somewhat vaguely. Definitely no own lanes. Not treated as mopeds.
I had to go to urban dictionary for wag = wild-ass guess.
Electric scooters are considered a “light electric vehicle”, but they have basically the same rules and obligations as normal bicyclists (they’re supposed to stay in the bike lane, etc). But the scooters aren’t allowed to go faster than 25km/h, and you need to be over 15 to use one.
Its honestly very impressive. By comparison, the city of St. Louis has about half as many people living in the city proper (300k vs 600k), and we had like 25 pedestrian deaths from cars alone in 2024. That doesnt even factor in bikes that were hit by cars and caused fatalities, or cars that hit cars and caused fatalities. Or the many vehicles that seemed to find their way into the sides of buildings (especially the cop cars) last year
Im assuming they mean Helsinki proper, rather than the metro. If they mean the metro area then it is about half the size of St. Louis (1.5M vs 3M). But that would be insane to have a metro of 1.5M people go without a single traffic death in a year
Username checks out.
They have good traffic designs in a lot of places but also horrible multiple lane passways without protection. And a significant minority of Finnish drivers break the law by not stopping on a crosswalk when other cars have stopped on the same crosswalk.
Also there have been plenty of near misses due to electric scooters. Children and drunkards are being extremely reckless with those, and in fact a 15-year old girl died near the second largest city Tampere just this summer when she crashed into a car (not publicized yet whose fault this was legally).
But good luck Helsinki!
