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đź’™ Amanda
This past summer, Helsinki made an astonishing announcement: as of August, the Finnish capital went an entire year without any traffic deaths. Not a single pedestrian, cyclist or driver died on the city’s roads. Not. One.
And this wasn’t an outlier year. Helsinki's traffic deaths have been steadily declining for decades.
Helsinki automotive deaths from 1980 to 2023
Includes driver, passenger, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities
Helsinki has long embraced the Vision Zero philosophy, which aims to completely eliminate road fatalities, and places responsibility for accidents on the design of traffic systems.
But how the hell did they actually pull this off?
For one, it helps that Finland is pretty serious about making vehicle deaths yesterday's news. The country comprehensively investigates every fatal road accident—similar to the extensive inquiries done by federal agencies, like the US National Transportation Safety Board, after a plane crash.
Mostly, though, it boils down to one powerful, and simple, strategy. They slowed down cars. A lot.
Today, more than half the streets in Helsinki have a speed limit of 30 km/h (19 mph).
No need for speed: A brief history of Helsinki's limits
A bundle of other initiatives help slow traffic. Purposefully narrow roads and strategically placed obstacles, like bushes and trees, keep drivers alert. Roundabouts and speed bumps force vehicles to hit the brakes. Automatic speed cameras monitor drivers.
And then there are the financial penalties. Finland's income-based speeding fines can be brutal. In 2023, a local multimillionaire was slapped with a €121,000 ($141,650) ticket.
Keeping cars at a crawl was an obvious move, because the relationship between speed and safety is so clear. Higher speed limits are correlated with a higher number of crashes.
Higher speeds also mean greater loss of life. A pedestrian hit by a vehicle traveling at about 30 km/h (18 mph) has a 5% chance of death. At 37 km/h (23 mph), that doubles to 10%. Impacted at 80 km/h (50 mph) the risk of death is 90%.
In other words: Simply dropping speed limits from 40 to 30 km/h can cut pedestrian deaths in half.
Apparently, the Finns have a saying: accidents don’t come with a bell around their necks. In other words, misfortune doesn’t announce itself.
But in Helsinki, at least they're slow enough you can see them coming.
BONUS DATA
The US keeps up its tradition of being an outlier
Helsinki's achievement is made even more impressive when compared with the traffic fatalities of similar-sized centers. Deaths in mid-sized American cities, for example, are notably higher.
Rates of pedestrian deaths for selected mid-sized US cities
Data don't include driver or passenger deaths. Average of annual rates from 2018 to 2023.
To be honest, it's not entirely fair to compare American cities with the Finnish capital. Overall, European countries have much lower rates of traffic fatalities than the United States. Of all the OECD countries —a group of wealthy, developed nations that cooperate on economic issues—the US has one of the worst rates of traffic deaths.
Rates of traffic deaths in OECD countries, 2021
Includes the 38 OECD nations and five key partner countries
Americans are 1.5 times more likely to die in an automotive accident than Egyptians, three times more likely than Canadians, and six times more likely than the Brits.
Yikes.
FROM ELSEWHERE
Here's what I found interesting, important or delightful this week:
America's nightmare is just... Europe. The newly elected mayor of New York has the American Right fearing a socialist Armageddon. But over in Europe, Zohran Mamdani's policies seem pretty normal.
“As a thought experiment, great. But don’t build thought experiments.” I can't get enough of The Line: the 170km-long linear city in Saudi Arabia that we all thought was an absurdist fantasy. Turns out, they thought they were actually going to build it. This visual investigation by the FT does not disappoint.
Modern-day oracles or bullshit machines? The authors of Calling Bullshit have created a free and very accessible online course meant to explain "the magic and the risks" of using AI. It was published earlier this year, but it's new to me.
Born too late to smoke. In a fascinating first, the Maldives has become the only country to implement a generational smoking ban. Anyone born after January 2007 can't buy or use tobacco products. The prohibition also applies to tourists.
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