Comment by Nurbek-F
18 hours ago
Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...
18 hours ago
Someone has to put a chart near it, describing the decline in driving in the city. When you're limited to 30kmh, you might as well get a scooter...
Most of your commute through a city is turning, accelerating and waiting in traffic. 30km/h or 50km/h makes every little difference in your commute times.
When getting on a larger road with less twists and turns, the speed is higher and the gains of the speed is higher; but the danger is also lower. Any road that may stop to wait for a turn or red light, could probably be capped to 30km/h without much cost to your precious commute time.
Great, scooters are much less likely to kill pedestrians during collisions. I'm glad more people who didn't actually need 2 ton metal boxes are downsizing to something more practical.
Careful what you wish for. Make it hard for people to have families and society will collapse.
This has to be the most American comment ever.
Society will collapse no less due to minor inconveniences!!
yes, famously no society has ever managed to have children without widespread private car ownership.
The Nordics aren’t struggling at all in this area, they also have incredibly generous parental leave and subsidised child care systems.
> Make it hard for people to have families and society will collapse
I used to live in Amsterdam which has a great public transport, great cycling paths, and limits of 30km/h. People are going cycling to school, on dates, and picnic with their families. Associating having a 3 ton gas guzzler as a prerequisite of having a family and a roadblock of "society" is only a question of poor imagination.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/six-health-lessons-learn-net...
There are multiple reasons Americans are obese as hell and living shorter than us Europeans, and driving everywhere is one of it.
Yes. There were no families before carriages… /s
A carless society/city is way more family-oriented.
And move six people in the same amount of space as one before, and for 1/10th as much energy use?
This is a bad thing how?
https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ 30 km/h is equal to 20 min/10km, 50 km/h is 12 min/10km.
So Helsinki city center is at 21km/h travel speeds, metro area at 31km/h. A speed limit of 30 km/h doesn't really affect these travel times much.
I can't find 2023 data to compare, however by other data on the net these are very common average speeds for any city in Europe even those with plenty of 50 km/h speed limits.
If more people take up public transport, bikes or scooters in fear of an average travel speed reduction of 1-2 km/h - that is a total win for everyone involved including drivers.
I live in helsinki and nowhere it is 20 kmh that I know of. Might be some random streets in center. And 30km/h streets are smaller living streets that driving that speed comes almost automatically.
Major ringways and main roads are 80 kmh btw
I have driven in many many countries - Helsinki does not feel slower than any place I have driven, faster in fact because there rarely are traffic jams
Average speed means you have both above and below speeds? When you lower the speed limit, the average will also go down?
But yes, in a city cycle time of traffic lights has a larger effect than max speed.
I somewhat doubt that scooters are a significant portion of traffic, given that the Finnish warm season is very short. Maybe Finns drive more carefully, drive less, and take alternative transport more often to avoid the ice and snow of half the year?
Yes that's probably the point. Cars kill many more people than scooters.
Not per mile driven.
Most scooter and bike deaths are from being ran over by a car going too fast for the zone. If you take that into the equation of the car (instead of the scooter or bike); then you probably only have heart attacks from warm weather left as a mortality cause for the bike.
So no, even per mile driven, cars kill people and bikes pretty much don't. And you should take the buss or train everywhere if you follow that logic to the extreme.
bzzzzt WRONG taking the limit from ~30mph to ~20mph does not significantly impact overal journey times.
A 30 km/h limit and decline in driving means zero people have to die. If enforcing scooters meant zero people have to die, I'm not sure what the objection is, truly.
Scooters kill people too (often the drivers themselves but not always).
The problem with escooters is that basically any accident is "bad" since you have no protection while you toodle along at 15.5mph. Not just slamming into the ground, but into street furniture, trees, building, bikes - you name it. A helmet (which no one wears) is not going to help you if you wrap your abdomen around a solid metal bench at 15.5mph. The real world has a lot of hard sticky-out bits (and perhaps ironically cars don't due to crash testing rules, so I guess crash I to a stationary car is your best bet)
It's a bloodbath in London.
Maybe enforce pedestrian crossings instead. Zero deaths without annoying anybody.
Do you think people rightfully crossing crosswalks never get hit, or do you include the cars in the equation too? What about every other type traffic accident that could be prevented from being fatal by just lowering the speed?
They had pedestrian crossings already, and that was not the deciding factor. It was the speed limit that kept people alive.
If people like you getting annoyed by having to drive slower is the price for just one person not dying in traffic, that’s already a win in my book.