Comment by graemep
7 months ago
On the other hand the UK as a whole had a lower road traffic realted death rate than Finland did: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The UK is not that different by comparison.
It is a pretty remarkable achievement though, and shows what can be done.
> The UK is not that different by comparison.
Do note that the UK is 15.6x as dense as Finland, and the climate is quite different: e.g. in Helsinki (southermost city) mean daily temperature is below freezing point 4/12 months of the year (very consequential for driving). E.g. in Scotland even the mean daily minimum does not cross freezing point in any month.
OECD data has Finland at 0.36 fatalities per 10k vehicles vs 0.41 in the UK.
https://www.itf-oecd.org/road-safety-dashboard
Yet most deadly months for traffic in Finland are summer months, when more people are driving, drinking alcohol and having a lot of free time.
At least in the countryside a stereotypical summer month death is one where bunch of young men go to a party with their old BMW or Merc, and then drive back in middle of the night at a crazy speed and hit a tree. Bonus points for the driver being drunk/on drugs and nobody wearing seatbelts.
A major reason for the substantial difference in life expectancy at birth between the genders. It becomes more even above 30-40.
̶B̶o̶n̶u̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶s̶-̶ Additional sadness
is it also possible that one of the side effects of this are that people driving recreationally become sometimes exceptionally good at it? see how many great f1/rally pilots Finland has generated. Clearly not good when this happens while drunk tho
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Speed enforcement has been extensively studied, and there are a lot of publicly available articles on the subject. The results are basically universally in favour of speed enforcement reducing motor vehicle collisions, reducing injury and cost.
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I see that you're not from Scandinavia. Here in Denmark the weeks around the first frost are infamous for people crashing in heaps because they were too slow to get their winter tires on and drove as usual. People here generally overestimate their ability to drive in bad weather, likely because we have so much of it.
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Tell that to all the (usually Southern) Finns who seem to think that you’re supposed to drive at or above the speed limit and at too short following distances even in terrible conditions… with predictable consequences.
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> People drive more carefully on frozen roads.
I am from the alps, with my share of knowledge about frozen roads. I would add to that: "People drive more carefully on frozen roads, *if they are not used to frozen roads and/or know roads are frozen.*"
For point one: In Austria I have seen (local) cars drive 30 km/h over the speed limit on the Autobahn while it was snowing at sub zero, with exactly the same (too close) breaking distance to others. In my experience for many people used to snow/ice the speed limit is still the orientation for many during ice/snow. If anything I'd expect the increase in defensive driving to be offset by the increase in accidents due to bad view, longer breaking distances, etc.
As for the second point: In Austria the second it snows or rainfall happens at subzero amadas of snow/ice clearing vehicles hit the road, yet during my lifetime I experienced black ice multiple times. To those who don't know what this is, it is a invisible layer of extremely smooth ice coating the road, which can happen of air + road temperatures and rainfall just align in the worst way possible. The resulting road is so slippy as if god had toggled off the "simulate friction"-checkbox. I remember a time where no-one could leave my village because they couldn't get up that one hill on foot. I managed to get to school by stomping through half a meter of snow next to the road and slipped 10 times on the way to the school while wittnessing multiple (minor) car crashes. I have seen such conditions happen on the Autobahn as well and the results are not pretty.
Zero traffic casualties in a cold climate therefore has to mean absolutely lightning fast road maintenance and/or stellar information on the current road conditions and is certainly an extremely impressive feat. I can't imagine this is possible without adaptive speed limits (and rhe infrastructure that is needed to pull that off). The Finns have reason to be proud (aside from them being really nice people in my personal experience).
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Could we recreate these optimum safety conditions by legislating for ice-feel tires? Then everyone would be in the slippery mindset all year.
You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving?
Is that a fair characterization of your comment?
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I would guess Finnish deaths are inflated by the rural rallying culture though, hard to compare
Yes, in rural Finland 17-year-old boys who just got their license regularly end up killing themselves and their friends by reckless driving.
I believe there is cultural issue with boys’ upbringing. Recently my 8-year-old daughter was spending a week with her mother’s relatives in middle Finland. One day she sent me a picture of an old Volvo in a ditch. “Guess what dad, my cousin drove it off the road and I was in the car!”
The cousin in question is ten years old. I was absolutely furious that they let the boy drive a real car and that my little girl was in it with no adult supervision. But my in-laws didn’t see a problem: “He was only driving on a private road — there’s no risk — everybody does it here — this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving.”
In my opinion this is how you train teenagers to think that safety and rules don’t matter, and that they’re invulnerable. But I can’t change these people’s views, so all I can do is try to make sure my daughter doesn’t ride with her cousins from now on.
There’s a reason rural folks have a higher fatality rate. That said, at least in the US, there’s the presumption that those who live more rural are more rugged, capable, and harder working.
I used to live in Chicago and SF. I’ve since moved to rural Tennessee. I can tell you everyone, including my kids, now have learned to drive our tractor. Granted I’m with them, but we had my 4-5 year old moving hay and they were helping me change oil.
I understand the concern, but everyone learns through doing. There’s definitely danger in that, and you should try to limit risk. At the same time; not teaching them is also high risk in that environment, as they’ll do it anyway with friends later.
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Finnish rural boys rarely have other personality traits than their favourite car brand. It’s usually BMW or Volvo, and friendships must follow the shared brand following. Someone driving a Nissan Micra should starve to death, according to both camps.
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There's definitely a cultural difference but whether it's an issue is debatable.
The urban America equivalent are teenage to twenty something males crashing Dodge Chargers at high speeds at 2:00am
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Rural Finnish driving culture is insane, to the extent that drunk driving often is considered socially acceptable, and something every kid does. Luckily, the bulk of the incidents dont involve drivers hurting others.
The country road rally drivers are rarely as bad as busy hatchback-drivers on a main road though. Especially the ones with kids in the back and on their way home during rush hours.
I saw tourists parking cars in New Zealand and, because the road is on an incline sideways, some cars would fall into a ditch.
Was the car driven recklessly or was it a parking/reversing mistake? This kind of thinking just brings unnecessary racism.
You would think that UK would have a lower rate of traffic incidents with it's "safe" approach to driving but numbers speak the opposite.
Can the urge to drive (fast) be channeled into cart racing? Or whatever the amateur rally circuit equivalent is?
> this is the best way to get the boys used to engines and driving.
Because that Y chromosome makes all the difference. /s
10 is plenty old enough to drive under supervision. We used to send people to war at 16.
The idea of stopping people from driving until 18 is infantilisation.
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At least your daughter had a good time.
TBF, that happens in the UK as well.
2hrs ago I was on switchbacks coming up into the mountains outside of San Jose Costa Rica. I come around one and bam there’s a 7-9 year old girl walking up the road in the middle of the lane. How the mountain roads in Costa Rica don’t run red with blood I don’t know.
This is why you always need to adjust your speed so that you are capable of comfortably stopping in the area of road that you can see clearly.
If you're going around a blind turn or over a hill or any other situation where you can't see very far ahead, you need to slow down so that you can safely react to surprises in the road.
If your driving puts you in situations where a girl walking in the road exposes you, then you are not driving safely. You should always be able to handle that situation, if you can't then you are going too fast.
This goes for any road, including highways, and any vehicle, including fully loaded semi trucks and bicycles, go-karts, whatever. The only situation in which this does not apply is in racing on closed tracks.
The law in most places agrees - if you had hit that girl then you would have been held liable.
Thats not to say the pedestrian wasn't acting recklessly, but considering the pedestrian was a child we can't really blame them. An adult should know better than putting themselves in front of a fast moving vehicle though. Most pedestrians involved in accidents could have avoided it by paying attention. It's generally the people who just walk out in front of moving cars that get hit by cars. A car hitting pedestrians on the side walk is much rarer.
I look both ways before crossing a one way street and I never walk into a pedestrian crossing until I am sure that the oncoming car is stopping. I realize that strategy doesn't work everywhere in the world, in Bangkok you pretty much just walk into traffic and hope that a few dozen motorists see and avoid you. But in many places cars will stop to let pedestrians cross.
You could share the road with others, you know? You weren't born behind the wheel.
beacuse traffic is so bad that no cars are really moving on city streets. The artificial safety of overly putting more lights than necessary is slowing down whole city and make it safer this way. The poeple and culture as whole is even less safety aware because of over governance and warning signs everywhere
There is nothing artificial about that.
The more you annoy drivers of cars and the less efficient you make streets for car traffic and the more you force them to not trust their surroundings, the safer the streets are for everyone.
Usually roundabouts are way better for this than excessive stoplighting. With stoplighting you run the risk of basically “the boy who cried wolf” and people becoming numb and starting to run reds.
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In theory but in London everyone is driving in a state of incandescent rage due to the non stop traffic lights and restrictions and people sometimes end up doing insane things because they've basically lost their head.
There are limits to the "deliberately piss everyone off" strategy
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That's because in the UK people just don't walk, except in certain places. You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example. But in other places people just won't walk there. One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.
>One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.
A patently absurd claim that holds up to no scrutiny whatsoever. The whole nation of the U.S disproves it, for one.
We have far better roads, vehicle testing and driver training than the US.
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> One way to reduce deaths is just get everyone into cars.
That is the opposite actually.
People walk everywhere in London. Outside of London and some major cities, cars are constantly blocking pavements and that’s certainly an issue, and gets a reasonable amount of coverage in local press and Facebook because people do walk.
Majority of kids at my cons schools walk home or to the bus station. We’re unusual living miles away from any connected transport.
I can only assume you’re either not in the UK yourself, or you’re one of those people who thinks that because they drive even the shortest distances everyone else does. I walk daily, anything from down the road to a shop to right across town, most of the roads are set up to deal with that and have decent crossings so I don’t get mowed down by a car.
The suggestion that people don’t walk in London is hilarious to me, have you never seen a central London street as people leave work? You can barely move for pedestrians.
I walk everywhere. I've walked across large portions of the country (literally weeks of walking at a time). London is one of the "certain places", as are other inner cities. Outer cities and the countryside are owned by cars. People aren't getting hurt because they only walk in designated areas. Cars are basically required in other places. Just a few weirdos like me walking and cycling.
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> You wouldn't get this crane incident happening in London, for example.
I'm assuming you mean "blocking the pavement without signage" there?
Although even that is a stretch because I can assure you that blocking the pavement with cranes, commercial vehicles, personal vehicles, etc. happens all over the damn place in London, with and without signage.
Really? People walk everywhere in the UK I have lived in - London, Manchester, and small towns. Edge of town currently, there are regularly crowds of kids walking to school going past, people going to the convenience store or cafe nearby, people walking dogs, people walking to get the bus......
If buses were more frequent people would take them more, and use their cars less.
People can be very reliant on cars really rural areas but that is a small proportion of the population.