Oslo had 0 pedestrian, 0 cyclist, 0 children and 1 driver trafic deaths in 2019
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City – City Population (Metro Area Population), City Density per Square Mile, City Traffic Fatalities
Oslo [1]: 690,335 (1,588,457), 3,938, 1
Nashville [2][3]: 692,587 (1,930,961), 1,374, 82
Portland [4][5]: 653,115 (2,478,810), 4,911, 34
Milwaukee [6][7]: 592,025 (1,572,245), 6,155, 68
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee
[3] https://data.nashville.gov/Police/Traffic-Accidents-2018-/8k...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon
[5] https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/74093
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee
[7] https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/statist...
Doesn't Norway have huge taxes on automobiles which chill ownership? If so, then population is not relevant. If only 10% of people can afford to own cars, then the number of crashes and fatalities will certainly be low.
The US standard of living is far higher. Whether that leads to more fatalities or not is anybody's guess. I would prefer the idea that we don't bother teaching people to drive very well or that people don't value developing their own good driving skills.
If you happen to have traffic, and wish to improve the traffic in isolation, perhaps. More generally, what you need to look at really depends on whether you're trying to measure traffic safety itself, society's general safety and well being (very complex), or something more specific.
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imo, american speed limits should be much lower in the city and significantly higher on limited access highways. 25 in the city often feels downright dangerous; I'll often go slower if I don't think I'll be creating an even more dangerous hazard. on the other hand, 65 feels like crawling on a straight, wide highway.
And yeah, that's gonna be a pretty standard speed limit, though some with 90-100kph are out there. Unless you meant 50kph... and in that case, it is low.
Speeds are often reduced if the road is sub par or if there have been accidents on that bit of road.
Yes. The limits are low, but definitivly not _incredibly_ low.
I drove Oslo Airport -> Flåm -> Bergen -> Oslo Airport. Looks like E16 / 7 / 52 were the roads involved, 968km loop.
The motorways are mostly on the south-eastern part of Norway, where it's reasonably flat. There aren't that many of them, building infrastructure here is really hard.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/hordaland/e16-bergen-voss-kara-til-_noreg...
I don't disagree that it's very difficult to build infrastructure! Every road must follow the contours of a fjord, or go over or through a mountain. I was very lucky to be able to drive the world's longest tunnel; I had read about it but honestly forgot about it until I made a left turn into a mountain and was perplexed as to how I could get to where I was going by driving into it.
In reality, though there is a lot more equality in Norway where much of the population shares in the wealth. Having traveled extensively in both countries, I can tell you that the standard of living for regular people in Norway is far higher than that of regular Americans.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
The speed limits are low, but you get used to that.
Best source I can find, suggests that travel times in Oslo are decent by world standards, and falls about where you would expect a US city of that size and density to be. It's conveniently right next to Portland, which was listed by the grandparent comment as a comparable.
The density required to have walking/biking/transit be realistic and efficient options makes over-subscribed roads a certainty unless you actively restrict automobile traffic. Private cars as the primary means of transportation works brilliantly in low to mid density areas, but fails utterly in high density ones.
There is no one size fits all solution for all cities. In my opinion it seems quite clear that there should be a negative correlation between density and private automobile usage in order to optimize safety and efficiency for all.
No, you don't, the point is that a similar amount of people can exist in a city without killing each other with cars.
Than Norway? The country with 25% higher GDP per capita than the US, a 33h average work week, and an infant mortality rate of a first world country? Nah
That oil money does help living standards. Especially since a big state ownership plus big Nordic welfare state ensures it ends up helping pretty much everyone.
When the oil runs out, they’ll still have their (currently) 1 Trillion dollar permanent fund to cushion the blow.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2017/04/14/report-detroi...
Oslo: population 690k (metro 1.6m) / density 3938 / deaths 1
Nashville: pop 692k (1.9m) / density 1374 / deaths 82
Portland: pop 653k (2.4m) / density 4911 / deaths 34
Milwaukee: pop 592k (1.5m) / density 6155 / deaths 68
That's probably why we felt at home on the streets during our stay there, as a family from Turkey. I would love to have that 0 deaths statistics here instead, though.
And being of croatian descent I can confirm they do it there too. It's not a cultural thing, it's a human thing to be impatient.
If anything it speaks of the flow of traffic.
Here in Sweden you can often safely cross the street because the entire length of the street has lights that work in a pattern. So there are long gaps in traffic due to lights further up/downstream on the street.
I stay out of principle.
For the most part, this is not a problem, people just explain their kids that these are things that they cannot do now but will be able to do later (hopefully explaining why).
But people don't put crossing the road at a light in those terms, they tell them nobody can safely cross the road safely when the light is red. So an adult doing just that and being safe directly contradicts your message and your authority. It makes you look dumb. And that's why they get riled up.
We should just treat the red light as an aid for the young and infirm and explain it to kids as just that.
There's still some people that don't know their limits, but that gives an idea of how this works in practice
True, but certain cultures see impatience as much worse flaw than other cultures leading to significant cultural differences in, say, crossing roads.
Seriously, if you ever visit Japan it will seem strange but people do almost always wait for the light.
Different cultures and legal system. I moved from UK to Poland. Almost everybody walks on red light in UK, almost nobody in Poland - you will get fined for doing so. I don't think anyone was fined for walking on red light in UK.
but more than that, in the UK in any intersection with traffic lights the pedestrians will never have a green light at the same time as cars.
meanwhile, in most countries i've visited making a left or a right turn in an intersection will most likely cause you to stop for pedestrians that also get a green light. frustrating and illogical!
Dublin is similar to the UK as far as I could tell, and honestly it felt like one of the worst design of traffic lights ever. Waiting for 2-3 minutes on a red light is pretty common, and green only lasts for 20-30 seconds. It's an absolute disaster for pedestrians, and as a result everyone jaywalks like crazy. I would say other countries have this right, even if drivers do have to give way to pedestrians immediately after a turn.
In some areas extra lights for new cycle paths operate asynchronously to the road traffic lights, these can be within 25m, worsening the gridlock and the pedestrian invasion of junctions.
In city centre areas a 30kmph speed limit is in force. A green for a motorist only ever means "proceed with caution", and a pedestrian already crossing the road at a junction always has priority (something many drivers don't seem aware of). Urban road user mortality is ~50% higher than Sweden, still relatively low compared to the EU overall, but the pending 2019 stats are worse.
3-phase signalled intersections (where pedestrians get a green signal to cross in all directions) are a relatively new development in the UK. They’re certainly common in London but I’d be very surprised if they’re rolled out to all intersections the UK.
If you want to turn right (in right handed flow) you can enter intersection on red (in Poland when additional green right arrow is lit up) but you have to yield to everybody, also pedestrians (that have green at the time).
In theory you are required to stop before you enter on red but most drivers don't and some don't even slow down more than is physically required to make a turn.
So if a cyclist or a pedestrian appears in path of such car unexpectedly (because there might be high vehicle waiting for green on the next lane) it is a dangerous situation.
And I live in Europe.
That’s certainly a matter of opinion (and as a German currently living in the UK I disagree): Having separate green light for pedestrians means that the average waiting time is much longer (both for cars and pedestrians) and, further, green light times are often kept much shorter. Having simultaneous green light for parallel car and pedestrian traffic does mean you have to pay more attention, and could theoretically increase the risk of accident (but I’m not convinced that this is the case in practice — in my experience it definitely isn’t!). But on the other hand it means that my time waiting at traffic lights is greatly reduced on average. I thus find the UK system a lot more frustrating.
I actually see the point of the UK system and think it’s entirely defensible. But both systems have their pros and cons.
If there were penalties for hitting pedestrians or cyclists, this might change. I presume Germany has stricter enforcement of rules with regard to vehicle/ped/cycle interaction. In the US, there is almost none. Hitting a pedestrian or cyclist is almost always deemed an accident, with no fault assigned (or, if fault is assigned, a $200 fine is the result, not loss of driving privilege).
This is common also in Sweden, but parallel green still generally works well. So enforcement cannot be the only explanation.
- the roads are more car-centric than European cities and suburbs. Crossings are poorly timed, poorly lighted, too wide, in the wrong places, etc.
Nearby, in a shopping/student district, there is a dual-carriage-away with high pedestrian crossing flow. It is only green for pedestrians for a few seconds before going to flashing-amber for both. It makes some sense as it's so wide that many cars can pass while people are still crossing.
However, as a pedestrian, I really hate it and feel unsafe. It rewards driver aggression because they treat it as green try to intimidate pedestrians by racing at any that are crossing or thinking about it.
Ultimately I think it angers both parties because each one thinks they have right of way and the other party is in error when really the flashing-amber has made it ambiguous and turns it into "aggressor wins".
However, people try not to do that when there are children present.
In LA you get a ticket for jaywalking, while in NYC everyone crosses anywhere including weaving though moving traffic. And some cities in Maine the pedestrian always has the right away at cross walks and otherwise don't have lights.
Isn't that the very point of a crosswalk?
[1] https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/2005-10-07-1219/KAP...
You have to think what pedestrian lights are for. They exist solely to improve the flow of car traffic. Pedestrian lights are in gross contrast to the rights and benefits of pedestrians. Without lights, pedestrians would always have first priority on a crosswalk. Cars would have to stop for any pedestrian crossing the street. However, drivers (of inefficient but fast automobiles) don't like waiting for a more efficient form (on the city centre scale) of traffic (i.e. pedestrians) to cross the street so pedestrian lights exist to ensure enough green time for cars so that they don't always have to stop. Thus, it is no wonder that any sensible person wouldn't cross the street on red if there are no cars coming.
It's natural that a locking mechanism would evolve for all cases. It's not a matter of being a car-centric monster, it's a matter of organizing traffic.
> Without lights, pedestrians would always have first priority on a crosswalk
Not all pedestrians cross in a crosswalk or look at what they're doing when they cross. Sure, let me stop abruptly for the pedestrian crossing right in front of me. Or in some situations pedestrians are always crossing (city-center)
This works (mostly) for slow streets or very low pedestrian traffic (and car) ones.
> hus, it is no wonder that any sensible person wouldn't cross the street on red if there are no cars coming.
Completely agree
This is the price you pay for deciding to drive a car in a city. If you choose a less lethal (to others) form of transportation, you'll have to yield less frequently.
The general principle of yielding downward (in terms of size of the conveyance) is hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old, and is more sensible today than ever.
Physics doesn't care who's right or wrong.
Edit: I'm not talking about crosswalks, I'm talking about people crossing outside of them
People should be able to cross outside of crosswalks, because the cars should be driving fast somewhere else, or driving at a safe speed in the city. That safe speed is far, far slower than I expect Americans or Australians are comfortable with. We are talking walking pace or slower.
The benefit of slowing cars down that much in a CBD is it makes it very obvious and intuitive that cars are the lower priority in the CBD. It makes it so cumbersome to drive through city areas that it is self regulating as people stop driving their cars through unless they absolutely must.
If it's so dangerous, maybe we should get the cars out
of the places where people are walking around a lot.
Since the primary purpose of a city is for people to get
business and life done, and not to move cars from one
side of it to the other.
People use cars for a variety of reasons - convenience just being one of them.
One's safety in public places (which cant be guaranteed in public transit atleast to the same degree as offered by motor vehicles), security from riffraff & sinister actors, protection from the elements in even slightly inclement weather, securing & securing valuables (like an expensive laptop or other gadgets) to & from work or otherwise, to receive & place phone calls when commuting in a private & noise-free environment, to enjoy a meal / breakfast while commuting (most transit options forbid eating foods or even drinking liquids) and a whole host of other reasons too long to list here - are all reasons why people prefer cars over transit.
Its foolish to dismiss cars as just A-to-B conveyance method for human bodies.
My reasoning to de-prioritize cars is simply that cars protect only some individuals at a high cost to everyone else in the city. They do it without solving the underlying issues, in some cases making them worse.
For most cities, focusing on cars takes resources (space/time/money) from systems that would otherwise help everyone in the city, like public transport and better amenities. Things like wider shared walking/biking paths, better lighting, safer public toilets and public spaces.
Cars create enormous amounts of noise, pollution and danger, and take up square miles of real estate, while getting in the way of everyone else. There's often dozens to hundreds of people waiting in the weather for just a handful of cars at one intersection alone. I forget how many times me and 20 others have to spend 10 minutes standing in the 40c heat waiting for five cars to muddle their way over the road.
The kicker is it doesn't even work that well, most cities with heavy car traffic are highly congested. Filling the space with pollution, noise and generally getting in the way while they barely achieve their own goals. Then when it's not so busy, the pedestrians are waiting for nothing. The car infrastructure itself is what's in the way. Increasing walking times, distances and exposure to the elements for everyone.
Not everyone can afford a car based metro commute either, parking alone can be prohibitively expensive. By focusing on cars, you're also creating a very tangible gap between those who get to enjoy the luxury of their car and those who have to stand in the sun/rain/snow/danger/noise and suffer. If you focused on making a better city instead of better roads, you could make it better for everyone.
Also, you really shouldn't be "receiving and placing calls when commuting" in your car. Hands-free included.
Finally, I struggle to see how you can "enjoy a meal" when you have to drive. Unless you're driving at the suggested walking pace, that is.
None of those conveniences is more valuable than the
human lives that are lost in traffic accidents.
We, as a society in modern times, weigh the trade-offs of many deadly and even fatal things and allow them, only if the net good is far too great to be ignored or sidelined. There are well established norms, standards and guidelines to vet those "net goods" as well. These things arent arbitrary decisions we make over a whim or fancy.
If horses and buggies were even 60% as "efficient" or rated 60% as good as any motor-vehicular form of transport I'm sure you would still see them on streets despite the downsides.
They arent. Thats why we dont see them (unless you count communities such as the Amish or Irish travelers racing horses on roads). They arent even half as good as cars, when you consider _all the factors_.
Despite all the downsides ( like pollution which should be a non-issue with the advent of electric cars or hydrogen-fueled cars like the Mirai ) cars are an out sized net good.
I could point to many other such conveniences that are more harmful than they are useful, e.g. electronic devices that cause much environmental damage, but the discussion is about cars and safety.
Regarding efficiency, this is a very vague term in this context. Cars are certainly more "efficient" than e.g. horse-drawn carts in terms of how much load they can carry but not, e.g. in terms of the fuel they require, or the necessary infrastructure. A horse carriage doesn't need to be mass-produced at a factory, the feed for the horse can be grown cheaply and sutainably and horse-drawn carriages dont' need asphalt roads. So, no, I don't think it's considerations of "efficiency" that is the reason we have so many cars.
I wouldn't dare propose a reason why we do. You seem to be much more convinced you understand the complex economics of the industrial age better than me, and most. I find this a bit hasty.
>> Despite all the downsides ( like pollution which should be a non-issue with the advent of electric cars or hydrogen-fueled cars like the Mirai ) cars are an out sized net good.
Electirc cars still require electirc power to be generated somewhere, somehow and power generation is the major cause of greenhouse gas production. Electric cars only displace the problem of environmental pollution.
Again, it's very vague to speak of a "net good" in this context. As long as there's cars we'll have fatal accidents and environmental pollution. What is the "net" in this case? E.g. how many human lives do we accept to be lost for how many hours gained travelling or carrying goods a certain distance?
To be honest, I always look forward to car threads on HN. They are quite entertaining, even if they are filled with at best weird opinions, misunderstandings of traffic laws, fun beliefs of traffic laws ("pedestrians always have right of way, globally"), and curious ideologies. A space entirely devoid of common sense, mostly populated by people whose experiences are exclusive to a country whose road safety stastistics are indistinguishable from the third world.
Canada has a very intense car culture. What you are describing has to be some sort of local exception.
However, I actually meant at intersections (which is, I guess, where I mostly crossed streets). This arrangement was new and refreshing to me.
However, it is of course reasonable that pedestrians can not assume to just walk on a street everywhere, at any time.
I'd argue that the lights are not to improve traffic flow, but to signal pedestrians that it's safe to cross, something sighted, young or otherwise healthy people often take for granted by just looking both ways before crossing.
So no - the lights aren't only to improve traffic. The dynamic changes when there are no jaywalking laws.
It isn't every car by any means, but enough cars that pedestrians need to assume that drivers are incompetent until given evidence otherwise.
(This is not to imply that severe injury and death are appropriate "punishments" for walking inattentively, merely that the pedestrians have large incentive to modulate their behavior, while drivers do not.)
Strange, because most likely the majority of drivers also walk at least a short distance around the same cities they drive into.
In the US in particular, eyballing the number of cars and the number of pedestrians in images of places like New York etc that I've seen, it's very hard to believe that there's a clear line separating all those people walking about from all those people who drive cars, other than the specific time of day they do one or the other.
So you'd think that being careful around pedestrians should come naturally to most drivers, if nothing else because they'd want other drivers to be careful around them as pedestrians also.
You sound like a non-American. Let me give you some advice: take everything you've ever seen about NYC, and file that in a different place in your brain's filing system away from your file labeled "America". It does not represent America in any way when talking about cars, walkability, culture, or really anything else really. It's a place that's totally unique in the world. For some reason, too many non-Americans see movies set in NYC and think that all of America is just like this, and it isn't at all.
(Personally, I wish it was more representative of America in terms of walkability, but it just isn't.)
But it certainly seems true in busier areas with less pedestrian traffic such as mini malls. Especially when pulling out of parking lots.
This is pretty limited to urban areas, in my experience. In more suburban and rural parts of the country, people are much more cautious and obedient to traffic signals and rights of way. Of course there are exceptions in both cases, but running red lights, turning into pedestrians/cyclists/etc is much more prominent in major cities. As an urban pedestrian, I just have to keep my head on a swivel because there's a good chance that the taxi/Uber across from me is going to run the light that just turned red so he can make his left turn instead of waiting for his signal.
Right-on-red is a huge problem in areas where pedestrians want to cross. If memory serves, the UK does not allow turns on red. That makes more sense to me.
On my walk to work, I have to cross one 8-lane suburban street. 4 thru lanes, plus several turn lanes in each direction. The radius of the corners is smooth. Stop lines are far back from the actual apex of the corner. So, cars can easily roll through corners at 40mph. They do this when I have a walk signal because they either have their own green, or they're turning on red and only looking for oncoming traffic (to their left) and not for pedestrians (to their right).
I have to cross a fairly wide, busy road to get to work. I wish it had a scramble with no-turn-on-red signage. That would make my commute massively safer.
1. There is a pedestrian signal that says to NOT cross, or
2. The traffic signal going in the direction the pedestrian is walking is red.
So if the light is green and the pedestrian signal does not say to not cross, then the pedestrian has the right of way over any cars turning. However, as with anything traffic related, that doesn't mean that a pedestrian can intentionally create an unsafe situation (e.g., start crossing the street as a car is turning).
So does that mean a person is allowed to intentionally create an unsafe situation by maneuvering their 2 ton+ vehicle into a crosswalk when a pedestrian is approaching it
The road markings were black and white stripes, which mean "cars must always stop for pedestrians crossing here" where I live (UK). The description above chimes with my experience. Who does have priority when the light is red but cars are still turning right?
In the end, I went back and had the nasty coffee in the university. It seemed to dangerous to try to cross.
Edit: this is different in different states? It was in North Carolina for reference.
Also, as a note, college campuses are some of the worst places for cars and pedestrians to have to interact. The students seem to ignore the rules of the road regardless of whether they are pedestrians or drivers.
OTOH, especially at a busy intersection, if you're just standing on the sidewalk looking confused, a driver looking to make a turn is probably going to just shrug and turn right through the crosswalk. Some drivers will doubtless be overly aggressive or inattentive. But a random driver is also not going to sit there forever waiting for you to make up your mind about whether to cross or not.
In your case if there was no indicator light. Then you could go for it when the traffic was going in the same direction as you or when clear from the other direction.
The general rule of thumb is from any corner you can cross. That does not mean you get to stop traffic to do so. Though it seems much more common now for people to just cross wherever they want in the area I live in. They seem surprised when I honk at them. It shakes them out of them looking down at their phone while randomly walking around. You may have 'right of way' but the driver does not always see you in time. Be safe.
Maybe roll down your window and say something instead of blaring your horn at people who aren’t encased in a car. Although I am not sure why you think you have a right to teach strangers a lesson.
Jaywalking is dangerous, especially on busy streets. And I admit to my fair amount jaywalking when I worked in downtown Chicago.
The horn is primarily about expressing anger but about imminent danger. A pedestrian steps out, from limitted visibility between cars, into traffic they deserve to be honked at. Not because of anger, but because they are putting themselves and others at undue risk.
That said, I don't think Ive ever personally seen someone respond to a horn in a fashion to avoid an accident. Twice last year, I was involved in accidents caused by someone else changing into my lane. Both times I saw it coming, laid on the horn and braked, but they kept coming faster than I could stop.
One, I couldnt avoid at all. We were in a construction zone, and the car next to me just kept coming over. I saw it coming, but had no where to go. No shoulder, just a concrete K-rail with about 6 inches of wiggle room. Side swiped me at about 55 mph. Entire driver's side was fuckedd up. Couldnt even open my door. Also managed to fuck up some of the passenger side as I did everything I could to get out of the way. (little bit of fender damage, cut both tires and scraped up a wheel)
The second one was I was in a left turn lane and the dude tried to force is way in. I didnt even see his signal until it was too late. Again, laid on the horn and brake, still mamaged to put his rear door into my passenger side front quarter panel.
Had a third actual miss earlier this year. Was driving in the 2nd from left lane in a rain storm, doing around 80mph on the highway. Car in the left lane, without signaling, starts coming over. Again, slam on the brakes and the horn, asshole keeps coming. Went from 80 to 60 in about a second or so, nearly getting rearended in the process. My car also started going sideways. In a lesser car, I probably would have lost it, but mine is pretty stable. Soon as I let hard off the brake, it recovered easily.
Point is, everyone assumes if someone is honking they're road raging at you, and some surely use it that way, but it's primarily about signaling imminent danger, and you should really take note (and probably return to your lane until you can figure out what the danger is by checking your blind spots, etc).
It's one person out of hundreds of thousands who visit each day. And the comment is downvoted.
> Although I am not sure why you think it is OK for that 1 dude to hold up about 40 other people
This is a perfect illustration of the US's driving-first culture. Let's do some math here. 40 people / 1.7 people per car average [1] = ~23.529 or 24 cars (which may be the case if it's rush hour, but probably not if it's not). If this is a 3 way intersection, and each of the cars is evenly distributed between directions (which I realize is incorrect, of course), then there are ~7.843 or 8 cars per side. Assuming an (informally weighted) average car size of 174 in. per car [2], with 2 ft of distance between each car, then the block length is a minimum of 1406 ft. Given that the average person walks at 4.6 ft/s [3], this distance would take 5.09 min. to traverse, just to get to your well lit next block. The average US commute is 26.1 min [4], which means just getting to the next block to cross at the well lit intersection would be 1/5 of the average commute, let alone the time most people are willing to tolerate to go to the grocery or pharmacy.
Obviously there are a lot of assumptions in this calculation, but it really goes a long way to showing how little American car-first culture thinks of pedestrian infrastructure, attractiveness, and travel times. "Just" walking over to the next, well-lit block, immediately makes a pedestrian trip for chores non-viable for anyone that values their time. To me, there also seems an in-built disdain for the time and safety of the pedestrian, and those attitudes do nothing but make it more difficult for Americans to do anything without their cars.
[1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tpm/guidance/avo_factors.pdf
[2]: https://www.reference.com/world-view/average-length-car-2e85...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_walking_speed
[4]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...
That's not what horns are for. You seem to think it's a punitive device, and I certainly would interpret it similarly to you aiming the muzzle of a gun at my chest.
Granted, I'll agree that's a dumb situation to cross the street, but your actions make it even worse.
To be clear, I mean that if everyone did what you do, going around rationalizing how people "get the horn" when they upset you rather than when your car is in legitimate imminent danger of a collision, we're mainly accomplishing two things:
1. Making driving more aggressive as a whole, associating all these little driving interactions with BLARING CAR HORN SOUNDS
2. Cheapening the meaning of the car horn for when it actually matters
The horn isn't a tool for letting out your aggression. Try screaming obscenities loudly in your car or something else fun like that.
For evidence that people don't know state/local laws, ask a group of people in the US when they are permitted to u turn. It varies widely, mostly in insignificant ways.
This is where you are mistaken. In the US, cars are obligated to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk while turning, even with a green light. The pedestrian signal indicates pedestrians have the right of way. Of course, drivers may illegally fail to yield, but whether a driver obeys the law is a different matter than what the law says.
As a pedestrian I want traffic flow to be as predictable as possible because that makes it easier to get where I'm going safely and lights accomplish that goal better than roundabouts or stop signs even if the traffic speed through intersections is higher. Higher stakes, better odds.
Before you say that I can read or listen to music on the way in public transport, I listen to audiobooks in the car, and the trams are lately so packed that for me it's especially hard to not puke because of the terrible air (and sometimes smelly people, luckily not that much in winter) there, sadly I would puke right into someone's face. Even though there is a lot of traffic which slows my car down, I am still in comfort. I'd rather sit 45 minutes in a car listening to wonderful music than be pushed inside a can full of people for the same time, and given the traffic, I am not the only one thinking the same.
First improve public transport, make it at least a tiny bit comfortable, then hate cars, not the other way around, that just won't work.
(let the downvotes rain... What did I expect, a discussion? Lol)
- you're looking at individual efficiency rather than system: in particular the fact that public transport is made less efficient by people driving. You're describing a chicken-egg problem if you want improvements in public transport
- you're focused on time as a metric, not accounting for economic cost (both individual and municipal: car infra is expensive), and other costs (health, env)
That it is possible that there a few individuals for whom driving is more advantageous than public transport? Of course, it is possible.
Is it likely that if everyone drove instead of taking public transport driving would become unbearable for everyone, you included? Of course again.
So what are you arguing for exactly? That everyone should drive? Are you looking for absolution for liking to drive? Are you looking for an arrangment where it is ok if you drive but not others?
also public transport is not there to help you shave off minutes from commute time, it's there for those who don't have the option of going by car.
The D line is a meme at this point, it is supposed to be finished for 20 years now.
Do you mean that car ownership is disincentivized by making people bear more of the cost of their car ownership?
I'm referring to a relatively small (but very vocal) segment of almost uniformly young and able bodied city dwellers with a fairly narrow and very strongly held set of views about what city life should look like. These people seem to want to hijack urban planning and tax policy to legislate in the exclusive interest of their preferred lifestyle without regard (and often with outright contempt) for the views of their fellow citizens. That's what it means to "impose" their views.
My prediction is that if and when any of this makes its way into mainstream discourse and actual policy, the backlash will be severe and rather ugly. This is particularly unfortunate, since there are plenty of real issues with urban planning and transportation, but instead of real debate we have polarized flamewars over trivialized strawmen (essentially "ban cars, maximize density" vs. "freedom and country living").
There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving.
I didn't assert that. As far as I can tell it's a tiny minority of millenials.
> There's is an equally loud segment of older car drivers who complain about the so called "war on cars" everytime somebody wants an alternative to driving.
They might be equally loud somewhere, but certainly not on HN. Also not in most EU countries as far as I can tell, but I don't presume to speak more broadly than that.
Is the route longer because there isn't a line that goes straight from your home to your workplace?
Is it because there aren't a lot of trains, so they take too long to arrive?
Otherwise it's hard to tell what the problem with public transport in your city.
I live in London for instance, where cars are _almost always_ the slowest option for trips around zones 1-2 or even 3, because the center is always very busy. So when commuting here the fastest option is usually cycling, then 5-10 minutes slower is public transport and driving, which depending on the time of day will also be slower...
The unfair advantage is not cost effective to grant to all cars, but still need to be acknowledged.
Still, to me, train is superior - I can just sit and relax. Driving is much more tiring. 15 minutes or so difference is not worth it.
I just checked a Rotterdam subway line and it does 30 stops in an hour[0] which is a ~32KM distance as a bird flies[1].
[0] https://www.ret.nl/home/reizen/dienstregeling/metro-b.html [1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nesselande,+Rotterdam/Hoek+v...
Plenty of suburbs have sidewalks.
If you think that a sidewalk in a purely residential area only goes to nowhere, you spend way too much time looking at screens. Get out, meet, and spend some time with your neighbors.
Seriously, get out and meet your neighbors.
I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods in the US. I realize that some of these are so big and remote that it really is too far to walk to anything significant, but those I visited did have grocery stores and such within a walkeable distance, but that's not always the case, and still there's not much if any sidewalks. One did have sidewalks, but using it to get to stores was a detour compared to other roads. The other did not have any sidewalks. I walked anyway (didn't have a car) and I felt like people looked oddly at me for doing it.
In Norway, almost all suburban areas have wide sidewalks now, even if grocery stores and such are far away. Kids generally use sidewalks for biking, and many kids bike or walk to school, even for a mile or more (3 for my high school, although there was school bus that I used in winter). People take walks from just outside their house to.. wherever. There's usually some park or just a patch of woods within walking distance. Maybe a shared playground or soccer field for kids.
There are generally walking paths between houses at regular intervals, so houses don't act as impassable walls. If there are steep slopes and hills, there's often stairs you can walk down.
I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. My mother in law house could've been a 5 minute walk from a lovely beach and supermarkets and cafes if there was just a path/stair that went down a slope from their house between other properties. Instead it's a 30 minute+ walk, along a long and winding road with an extremely narrow sidewalk, where a 100m stretch of the road for some inexplicable reason is missing sidewalk altogether (if you ask for directions on Google Maps it'll avoid this stretch, which gives you a 1 hour walk instead)
Americans tend to have strange ideas about walking. If they think about it at all, they tend to think of it as something that's only done in extremis.
I've discovered, for example, that, when I travel for work, it's generally useless to ask hotel staff if they can recommend any restaurants "within walking distance" when I'm staying in a suburban area. They will always say that there aren't any. Even when there are several within 500 meters of the hotel.
When I am visiting the main office (also in a suburban area) I stay about 1.5km away from the building. I choose to walk to get between there and the hotel. It's a lovely walk, all sidewalks, through a quiet neighborhood. My colleagues consider this to be very peculiar behavior. If someone recognizes me while I'm on the sidewalk, they'll stop, express concern, and ask me if I need a ride, and I generally have to assure them multiple times that I'm OK and I just prefer to walk.
There is recreational walking, but it can be odd. I have family members who live in areas without sidewalks, and they do regularly go for pleasure walks, but such outings tend to start with a car ride. Because the nearest place where space has been made for walking is several miles away.
Walking on country roads generally isn't pleasant. The roads are narrow, the traffic is fast, the drivers are discourteous and/or texting while driving, and the only place to put your feet where you're not in danger of being hit by a car is often a drainage ditch.
Hit by a car at 3pm, i.e. broad daylight. "Deputies ticketed Weaver for not being as far off the road as possible. The driver who hit him was not charged."
In the suburbs I grew up in, walking, especially to accomplish practical tasks like grocery shopping, was seen a signal that you were "on welfare" - which was code for poverty.
Meanwhile, people drove to fitness clubs to walking miles on treadmills while slurping energy drinks.
Where, in the movies?
If you're talking about Manhattan, NYC, that place is absolutely nothing like the rest of America, except maybe for a few other large cities' downtown areas (DC, Boston, Portland, etc). These few places have entirely different lifestyles from the rest of rural and suburban America, where cars reign supreme.
In my mind that means looking up to 1.5 km walk or 10 km of cycling really says more about me and you than it says about the distance. The world walking record is 175 km in 24 hours. Think about it, that is much more than a hundred times 1.5km. Someone some day cycled.... over 900 km in a day! Climbing Mount Everest is only 20 km but it takes 55 days!
You have to be in terrible shape to look up to 1.5 km.
Is that right? That's 685 days of continuous walking at the world record speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_R...
You have 52 days to do it. Record: 40 days 09:06:21 by Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto
with my road bike (i.e. no suspension) i usually prefer the road over adjacent bike paths (which is legal in my country), as the roads are usually in better shape.
And then you could have second story pedestrian entrances to buildings, which already have elevators in them, so it wouldn't even be an issue for people who have trouble with stairs.
I assume it would cost more in building and maintenance costs than sidewalks.
The closest thing I can think of is a series of connected pedestrian tunnels that you see in some Canadian cities like Montreal and Toronto. Those primarily exist for a different reason; winter is months-long and so cold that you don't want to step foot outside at all. Pedestrian bridges don't accomplish this goal.
For Minneapolis, the first segment was built in 1962. Segments are often retrofits, as many of the buildings predate there system.
Plus, said catwalks need to be accessible, so how many elevators are you planning on putting in and maintaining now?
Pedestrian bridges flat-out suck. Better to get rid of as many vehicles as possible and slow the remaining ones waaaay the hell down so that people can walk along streets and across intersections safely.
If this idea were viable, someone somewhere in the world would have already done it. But the closest I can think of is Las Vegas, and that's only along one road, and it's not even a full pedestrian pathway but instead just some bridges over intersections, and those are primarily there to prevent drunks from getting run over by cars.
Hong Kong does this in the downtown area. It’s viable because of the very high population density and prevalence of foot traffic.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hong+kong+pedestrian+bridge&iax=im...
It works out great. Though admittedly it’s more of a workout than walking in flat Manhattan.
That's a several orders of magnitude difference between the capacity of the two systems.
Quite a few cities do do this (Florida, I'm looking at you!). It's a terrible design, might as well have a machine that punches all pedestrians in the face as they go by.
Consider further coverage and commentary such as
https://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/streets-in-the-sky-the-...
https://failedarchitecture.com/the-downfall-of-londons-stree...
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/notopi...
The only places I've seen without sidewalks would be clearly classified as "rural".
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/...
A much bigger issue is that you can't generally get to a store, across town, or to work on sidewalks.
My suburb had 2 very popular parks at either end -- as kids, we always walked or rode our bikes there... on the road since there were no sidewalks. Likewise when we went to a friends house we generally walked on the road (or cut through people's yards).
There are plenty of reasons to have sidewalks even if there's no commercial destination to get to, not everyone can drive everywhere they need to go. Of course, this was a time when kids were allowed some autonomy, nowadays maybe parents would drive us 2 blocks to the park.
The neighborhood still has no sidewalks, but I see speed bumps and "Slow down - watch for children signs", so seems that kids do still walk on the roadway and parents are worried for their safety.
I rode the school bus to school because the school was way too far to walk -- it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the school was only about half a mile away, but with no sidewalks, it wasn't realistically walkable despite the short distance. We spent more time waiting for the bus every morning than it would have taken to walk there.
At the time it seemed completely normal - why would anyone walk when they could drive!? But now I pay attention to walkability and bikeability and avoid driving when I can. (not just because it's good for the environment, but it's good for me too)
However, one thing I do remember was that there were absolutely no sidewalks, so for a lot of people it probably didn't seem walkable.
Traffic lights in combination with a pedestrian crossing proper (a zebra crossing) seem to be rather rare, at least in Europe. Thus most crossing points of pedestrian would, in absence of traffic lights, not give them the right of way, because crossing traffic generally does not have the right of way. Traffic crossing from something other than a street never has the right of way.
So I don't see at all how "lights are in gross contrast to the rights of pedestrians".
Yes, that's what I wrote. "Crossing traffic" refers to traffic crossing your road. In general, traffic that follows your road always has priority over you making a turn. Hence if you make a left turn you have to yield to oncoming traffic, and pedestrians going straight on the left. Similarly, if you make a right turn, you have to yield to the pedestrians going straight on your right. (When you make a right turn, there should be no way for someone (motorcycle, bicycle) to drive on the right of you, since you are supposed to be the rightmost thing on the road. Obviously you still have to watch out for bicyclists driving on the sidewalk.)
For the same reason you have to yield to pedestrians crossing your exit when leaving a roundabout, even if they don't have a zebra crossing.
Zebra crossing = pedestrian right of way, but the pedestrian should acknowledge the driver. This means that on the zebra crossing pedestrian has right of way, except when there is a pedestrian traffic light.
Not sure that traffic lights with zebra crossings are rare in Europe? Most intersections in cities are like that at least where I visited.
Pedestrians here make sure that there are definitely no cars moving anywhere near the crosswalk, and no one potentially wanting to make a left turn, before venturing out.
This extends to people waiting in the middle of the road between traffic flows (usually on wider roads) which in my experience is only common behaviour in countries where jaywalking is not seen as a problem.
We have a ton of accidents on pedestrian crossings so those rules are probably bad.
I'm not sure that it's viewed as OK, but yes, absolutely, people will do this. People will actively walk past a marked crossing, and 10 - 20 meters down the road walk straight out into traffic.
It's amazingly absurd. Rather than wait a few minutes for a green light, some people will prefer to run between moving cars in an attempt to save a little time.
This is mostly true for Germany as well. At least in big cities.
That's not right in my experience. Swedes walk across when it's red. Danes wait for green, even when standing by an empty road in the middle of the night. When the Øresund bridge was opened, Swedish television made news spots informing people in Scania that Danish motorist aren't used to people stepping out on the road, and to be attentive spotting danish cars.
Maybe it's because I was paying attention to tourists like me who obviously reluctant to cross on red in a foreign country.
I'd like to stress that Italy is quite diverse throughout and not all us Italians resemble the stereotype. Happy new year.
Also I was quite suprised the first time I heard of it being on to run a red light if you’re turning right. This is not legal AFAIK in all of Scandinavia nor the majority of Europe.
So when you're driving around Oslo you have to be prepared for a pedestrian to step in front of you at any second. It certainly creates a careful, "slow & steady" driving mentality towards pedestrians. (This does not necessarily make them safer drivers at other times. Immigrants to Norway often discuss amongst themselves how bad Norwegian drivers can be.)
So it's likely you could get an immediate decrease in total traffic deaths of close to 20% if you could just force everyone to wear a seatbelt.
Better roads & infrastructure (which lead to less car use and slower traffic), driver education, enforcing traffic laws do help though.
Next comes the expensive things: Replace the car fleet with large, safe and modern cars. Build infrastructure like pedestrian walkways etc to have few unprotected people in traffic. Replace crossings with roundabouts and rebuild motorways and other high speed roads to never have oncoming traffic (separating railings etc). Have extensive automated speed monitoring, including average-speed monitoring, i.e. multiple speed cameras that time the passage of cars over some distance such as through a tunnel.
SUVs are not only notorious for their awful gas mileage but also how unsafe they can be for the pedestrian or other car they hit if they do.
Not necessarily for the other cards on the road, or pedestrians.
From what I was told this is how it works:
Prosecutors are bribed to make intentional mistakes so that a judge will dismiss a case (called in Romanian "viciu de procedura", roughly translated to "procedural defect").
Judges themselves are bribed usually in high profile cases, and because of the many legal loopholes it is difficult to prove they are corrupt. Laws can often be interpreted two ways, and it's not uncommon that two lower courts give radically different sentences compared to higher courts.
I heard of cases where doctors are bribed so that a sudden serious health issue is discovered so the perpetrator doesn't get to serve time. Specifically related to traffic offences a high profile political figure recently killed two people, and although the guy was initially able to walk on his own, two days later, the individual was shown on a hospital bed unable to move. The media suspects both doctors and the judge will be influenced, because in Romania by law a judge has to establish what is the percentage of fault each party has. The guy was on the phone when he killed a car driving opposite lane, but since he has been injured "seriously" then the victim is also being blamed for ...injuring the perpetrator. Since he was hospitalized it's easier for a judge to say the victim had X% of fault and thus give a more lenient sentence.
Someone I know working for the economic police told me that they are told exactly whom not to verify, because they are known to do tax avoidance, but they "create jobs" (everything has an excuse) so they are to be left alone.
Basically, there are so many wholes in the system that one doesn't need to bribe the foot soldier, they can just bribe on part of the system and they will get away with it. Applies to traffic offences, financial crime and everything else.
Don't get me started to the amount of fraud that happens with EU funding in Romania as that's also ripe with creative ways to rig the system.
What I find very strange is that people really don't like talking about such issues, saying one should not bad mouth their own country, or when the EU raises such issues they raise the "non interference in internal affairs card". If the foreign media raises it then it's racism. There is a small number of people still opposing this, but recently the police has without shame started beating or harassing them. I see no change in sight because the culture itself is predominantly in favor of letting things work as they do.
In cities it's different, there even a 10 km/h reduction makes a big difference for safety on intersections and with bikes/pedestrians.
It is mostly driving culture, I noticed in Romania people have to get quick everywhere because of "reasons". They have a car so they feel important. Like "out of the way pesants on foot". There was a lot of bad roads, and romanian people I was working with, mostly complained about roads being shitty. (Taxi drivers driving like Formula 1 drivers, good that we did not crashed into anything)
That said, Poland would be somewhere in between Romania and Netherlands (not sure about stats) but in my impression of driving culture. There is still a lot of people who think "I have a car, I am important, I have to be quick everywhere because of reasons". Infrastructure was bad in Poland as well (last years we got a lot of better roads, so I am happy about that and hope Romania gets their infra a lot better also, or have it built now).
In the Netherlands, no one gives a fuck if you have a car, you are not important just because you drive. Everyone basically can afford a car (not being communistic country, everyone having a car would be quite normal since 80's, I bet Norway also had a lot more people driving since 80's than in PL or Romania) so by any means having a car is not a status symbol (unless it is new Porsche or Tesla). Fines are insanely expensive (at least from what I read it is also the case in Norway).
So basically two things as my take away for this: drivers thinking they are more important, shitty infrastructure.
In Norwegian: https://www.vegvesen.no/trafikkinformasjon/trafikksikkerhet/...
My car will nag the hell out of me if anyone isn't wearing a seatbelt at speeds over 20 km/h. I assume this is true for most modern cars.
Part of the population who didn't grow up with seatbelts is aging. I remember my late grandmother hated the seatbelts, they didn't exist when she grew up. Often she would pretend to use the belt, holding it in place by hand so that it looked like she was wearing it. Stupid, and illogical, but that's how it is..
That only leaves the "cool" youths. Once "modern" naggy cars become old and cheap enough for them, they'll probably start too (or go out of their way to disable the sensor, or uncomfortably wear a seatbelt behind their back - turning a passive action into an active one.).
Yeah, I don't have my seat belt on.. because I am getting out of the car!
Sadly I have seen a number of people use "alarm silencers" basically just an end cap to fool the automated system that the seatbelt has been engaged. They even have some cute designs with Micky mouse heads for example.
Even people that have grown up with seatbelt alarms. The common explanations I've seen is that it "messes up my suite" or "feels uncomfortable".
The way some people get around it is by plugging a fake "belt end" thing into it so it thinks you're wearing a seatbelt. Quite stupid because that also enables the airbags which are quite dangerous if you're not wearing the seatbelt.
Fire detectors covers/alarm silencers/extinguisher disablers.. Life boat/jackets deflators.. fake empty lightweight shell bike/motorcycle helmets.. reflector blackouts.. etc..
Kinda like buying Darwin Award lottery tickets..
I've got another vehicle where it goes full chicken little if I don't button the seat belt first.
Both of them make me nostalgic for a Mitsubishi I had where the "chime" was a specific speaker that was easily disconnected and not a full blown part of the stereo/canbus/ecu and blasting out of every speaker in the car.
One way to (sort-of) check that would be to compare that 1/3rd with the fraction of all drivers that do not wear a seat belt.
Knew some kids on HS who liked to party hard. They drove drunk and somehow flipped their car. One of my friends wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was flung violently from the car -- but lived. Even made a full recovery, eventually. The driver and another passenger were crushed.
That’s not “Indeed” at all. I claim that “belt ⇒ survival” isn’t true (as confirmed by the fact that 2/3rds of those dying in traffic did wear a seatbelt)
Clearly an achievement that has been worked for and not statistical anomaly low.
Good on Oslo for using a data driven approach. Finding the political capital to do that sort of thing instead of just caving to whoever screams loudest seems rare these days.
The upcoming car free city center in question is just a pretty small area, which has been a driving hell for years anyway, due to all the pedestrians, public transportation and low speeds. Unless you're a taxi who want to increase your fare, you wouldn't want to drive through it anyway.
It is a legitimate reason to change the curvature or build a bridge or additional exit in Norway "because it's difficult to drive in".
It's really quite incredible, and combine that with safer cars, and you can really start to eat into traffic fatalities.
That might genuinely be the intention but I'd worry that -- depending on the kind of 'challenge' added to roads -- it might not always work out for the best.
The design is often (intentionally) tricky to navigate. Brick/cobble roads to make driving fast uncomfortable. Planter's narrowing/blocking half the road, resulting in the road frequently being limited to a single lane (often alternating sides) so cars can't simultaneously pass. Frequent 90 degree turns, that sorta thing. It make it impossible to drive fast on these roads.
Note that this is only applied in some "zones", generally this applies to streets with houses, which will then connect up to a 30 km/h max road that is less obstructed and functions as a connecting artery to main roads in the city/town and eventually provincial roads (80 km/h) or highways.
Each classification has different goals, so highways and provincial roads are "vehicles only", cyclists and pedestrians will be on completely separate unconnected paths (usually with several meters of separation from the main road).
Main roads will have both cars and cyclists, but usually separate/designated bike lanes (and sometimes even separated bike paths). Only the 30km/h and woonerf streets really have bikes and cars mixed on the same lane (and will have measures that restrict car speed like I mentioned above).
That may be, but it also made 95% of drivers (those obeying traffic regulations) actually stop for you to cross. Obviously they don't if there's no crossing, and you have to wait ten times as long to cross safely.
Major, expensive stuff like changing the routing or curvature is pretty rare and most likely to happen if the road is reworked anyway.
The two ton vehicle slamming into a pedestrian at medium speeds will probably kill them.
The only way to solve this problem is to lower speeds or remove the car from the road.
A typical European car hitting a pedestrian at 30mph is 80% survivable.
(This road safety video is 14 years old now, and since then some places in the UK have managed to introduce 20mph limits, which are even better.)
But if you read the recommendations, you will notice the language talks about how it's basically still on you to not die.
For example, pedestrians have right of way when crossing a street where a car may be turning in to, so there should really be no need to check across your shoulder for traffic.
Most drivers don't seem aware of these laws, I get honked at regularly.
https://www.sdera.wa.edu.au/media/1629/pedestrian_road_rules...
Well it makes sense, given we still have not figured out how to legislate people back to life and have recognized that making something illegal does not make it impossible.
Yes, because in a fight with a ton of metal, you will always lose. Of course you need to be careful around moving vehicles...
One thing that sticks out is that Norway has very low speed limits. They also have strict enforcement compared to the UK and super high fines.
In the northern part of the country you really need it because the weather varies a lot and the highways are basically mountain passes. At the moment around where I am close to Lofoten the roads are pretty much ice rinks as it's been constant rain and wind for a few days whilst the lower surface of the road was compacted snow/ice.
Plus there are animals.
But even in town 30, 40, 50 limits are common in places that would be way higher in the UK.
The weather is an interesting point though, UK doesn't get any harsh winters - e.g. it almost never snows and doesn't go below 0 degrees celsius, however Norway seems to fluctuate between -5 and +15 degrees celsius.
Oslo: https://en.climate-data.org/europe/norway/oslo/oslo-81/#clim... London: https://en.climate-data.org/europe/united-kingdom/england/lo...
You might see a 40 or 50 limit. 30 zones are generally reserved for places that are fairly built up.
When I have to go inside "ring 1", I usually drive to a free parking/charging spot for electric cars and walk from there. It's quite close to aker brygge and close to the high way.
Back when I was living in Oslo (and didn't have children) I didn't have a car at all, no need for it.
Sorry to hear that other people's lives get in the way of your idea of 'fun'.
When you're not a native English speaker, it's very common to have subtle differences in intent lost in translation due to different ideomatic expressions. It's a good idea to be charitable (or ask for clarification) wrt. the perceived intent of the speaker, especially when they're from a different culture.
In this case you can also translate it to an American idiom: It's a pain in the ass :)
What he meant was: "Not impossible but it's a pain in the ass and the speed limits are very low."
Nothing to do with fun, in the English sense of the word.
It's amazing how many inconvenient counterpoints (and trolls) we can now bury under an extra layer (the view hidden tweets button) because we don't like what they have to say on a public forum.
it’s like Twitter PMs have never heard of the Streisand effect.
If you want your backyard-privacy treatment then turn down your megaphone and make your profile private.
The Oslo city center is almost entirely car-free after eliminating parking spots and banning cars on certain streets. The Norwegian capital finished at the beginning of this year, removing the last of approximately 750 street-side parking spots within the city center and replacing them with bike lanes, benches, greenery and parks.
With nowhere to park in the city center, there are essentially no cars in downtown Oslo. A few exceptions are made for delivery vehicles during specific hours, spaces for EVs to charge, people with disabilities, and of course emergency vehicles. Parking garages outside the center are available to the public, with 9,000 available spaces, and drivers are diverted via traffic restrictions to use ring roads to bypass the city.
Oslo Is (Almost) Car-Free — And Likes It That Way (March 2019): https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/05/oslo-is-almost-car-free...
Drivers ed starts with a 17 hours (2/3 days) theory course, then you are allowed at 16 to start practice driving with parent/other experienced driver in the passenger seat, then you do mandatory hands-on courses on: night driving, cold weather driving, safety driving (on closed track); typically you take at least 5-10 driving lessons on public roads with a certified instructor, then you can take the theoretical exam, and finally the 1-hour driving test before you get your certificate.
Technological improvements in cars is a factor, but improvements in infrastructure is probably more important.
When I got my license 20 years ago, there were few roundabouts and on lots of roads there was oncoming traffic. I did overtaking where I needed to judge the timing with oncoming traffic to do it safely.
Now 20 years later I almost never overtake with oncoming traffic (as in a few times per year with 20000km). Highways are separated, often into “2+1”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B1_road
Not because I drive slower or more safely but because there just isn’t a need.
There are almost no big 4 way intersections with 2 roads having speed 50kph or over. They are converted to roundabouts (thousands of them).
This is Sweden - but it’s pretty much the same story.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/traffic-d...
In Austin TX, population ~1M, we had 74 vehicle related fatalities in 2018.
And you're kind of contradicting your claim that it's totally useless. 121/million vs. 1/million shows at what order of magnitude the comparison takes place, which is good enough to contextualize things, and your example of Austin further shows that the order of magnitude isn't far off.
"In my neighborhood last year there were also no vehicle fatalities."
Is that in any way helpful?
It's also useless because a neighborhood is too small a unit of measurement to be useful, period. Unlike cities, states, or the entire country, the vast majority of neighborhoods have zero vehicle fatalities.
An international driving permit which uses a standardized format and includes translations may be required.
Not true in many EU countries. In France you're supposed to get a French driving license after two years of residence. Never heard of this being enforced, but I know people that changed when their licensed needed renewal so they could deal with a local administration.
That's in contrast to people from some non EEA countries who have to take a local driving test.
> A total of 256 were killed and 2,588 injured in 2,529 road accidents nationwide from Dec 27 to 31
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1827019/seasona...
> Over the Dec 27-31 period, Bangkok had the highest number of deaths at 12
(...which implies a very long tail of cities outside of the capital.)
"- Oslo has received several regulations that have reduced the number of places where it is possible to drive. This is especially true within the city center and downtown areas. People have started cycling more. The risk of accidents between motorists and cyclists has been reduced. The more you separate the different road groups, the less the risk of serious traffic accidents. And then we see that the speed limit has been lower on several roads, says Steen."
So we're good at separating bikes from cars, when it's practical and when we have the space to do so. Gothenburg and Stockholm city centres are two bad examples. While Malmö city is a very good example.
Don't get me wrong - they're building new bike lanes at a rapid pace. However, traffic, bicycles and pedestrians freely intermingle most places, which works because it helps reduce car speeds massively.
Drivers perceive intermingled streets as more dangerous, so they drive safer.
This video illustrates it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyWYvovLvMQ
https://13wham.com/news/local/pedestrian-hit-by-car-then-tic...
> A man in Ontario County was ticketed after he was hit by a car.
> Deputies ticketed Weaver for not being as far off the road as possible. The driver who hit him was not charged.
In broad daylight, incidentally.
To expand on #2 above, most of the world still predominantly drives manual transmission vehicles, and licensing and enforcing standards are much higher, as well as cultural factors which increase driving engagement. All of this culminates in the average driver being much much more attentive of their surroundings outside the US than inside the US. In the US its nearly the reverse, majority of vehicles are automatic transmissions, almost all newer cars now have BLISS and other automated safety systems which are a reaction to fatalities from distracted driving. Texting while driving is epidemic and is more dangerous now in most states than drunk driving is.
Replicating the factors that Oslo has which drives their stats in the US is likely to be impossible, and probably would create such far-reaching consequences that it's also undesirable.
But for the the technical argument (cars, infrastructure) I’m not so sure. Manuals are definitely going the way of the dinosaur in Norway (people buy SUVs and Teslas - they don’t even have manual as an option).
Distraction is a problem but it seems it should be as big a problem everywhere where there are distractions. What helps there is infrastructure: a distracted person is much less dangerous in a roundabout than in an intersection. A cyclist on a separate path is less likely to be hit by both drunk and distracted drivers etc.
But yes these things are expensive. The consequence of replacing thousands of intersections with roundabouts is huge. Building bridges and tunnels so pedestrians never need to cross roads is expensive. Converting highways to be separated without oncoming traffic is really expensive, even if Norway and Sweden fancy the cheaper alternating 2+1 lane conversions.
Getting rid of the first part of deaths is low hanging fruit. Just change DUI levels (perhaps doing something about distraction but it’s unfortunately much harder as there are no breath tests for distraction). That’s almost “free”.
Going the rest of the way towards zero costs a lot of (tax) money in infrastructure, and that might be a harder sell.
(The above figures are only for road traffic; several people were killed by trains, but those are excluded from calculations because of politics.)
And ~60% of new cars sold are electric in Norway.
They are doing it right.
Too bad the rest of the world is slow to catch up.
There is a specific reason for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway#H...
Most new cars sold in Norway are electric and Tesla has almost 50% share of electric cars. Model 3 is the most-sold vehicle in Norway.
Most of this is probably due to the local government focus on walkability. The article describes that the reduction is due to reduced speed limits, an increased amount of bike-paths and limiting a large number of roads to only pedestrian traffic. The large increase in road tolls and increase in cycling has probably also reduced the total number of cars on the road.
Anecdotally I've got the impression that Tesla drivers are among the most aggressive ones on the road in Norway, but this is only my experience.
Whole country 5 million (Oslo 673.000) and 20 percentage expats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Norway
You can't have much accidents already by default.
There are many cities in the world like Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow population way bigger than whole Norway.
In 1946, there were 161 fatalities and 675 gravely injured. This grew more or less linearly to 1971, with 533 fatalities and 4069 gravely injured. Since then it has fallen, again more or less linearly, to 108 fatalities and 602 gravely injured in 2018.
Numbers for 2019 are not out yet, as statistics for december have yet to be released.
[1]: ssb.no
The ‘no children died’ in 2019 is something else and a really good thing!
This is a psycho statement honestly reevaluate your values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
My point is that Norway has a unique responsibility as a democratic nation with outsized oil revenue to take a global lead on climate change and I don't see that happening.
Edit:let me say though that I am genuinely pleased Norway is investing in traffic safety as opposed to supersized aircraft carriers or weapons of mass destruction
You can argue that's the buyer's responsibility, and you can argue that it's the extractor's responsibility. Both arguments are valid. It's a mix of both I'd say: the extractor is making market prices lower than they would be if the oil had not been extracted.
It seems like the same would go for CO2 emissions. There will probably always be uses for oil that are worth the cost in environmental damage, and if someone uses it for things that aren't then it's on them. Just as there will probably always be occasions where shooting people is at least defensible, and if someone uses a gun for murder then it's on them.
(But if an oil company, or an oil-producing nation, goes out of its way to encourage irresponsible use of oil then I will happily blame them for it, just as I would blame a gun manufacturer that encouraged murder or gang violence -- or, more likely, war -- in order to boost sales.)
When someone gets shot, I blame the legal system that makes it much too easy to access guns.
And yes I also blame handgun manufacturers for their abrogation of responsibility.
Against whom should be tally up the CO2, the user of the manufactured item or the producer of the manufactured item?
In the end, we have to leave carbon in the ground. Even with increasingly dubious prospects for profitability, and increasing environmental risks (from oil extradition in the far north), Norwegian governments have not been willing to leave any oil in the ground.
What is being completely left out of this conversation is the impact on quality of life. Cars are simply far more convenient than public transit or biking or walking, when supported appropriately by infrastructure and policy. In the absence of “traffic calming” measures (a euphemism for making driving painful) that accompany Vision Zero initiatives, cars are fast, don’t involve waiting time, and are a point to point option that takes you straight to where do you want to go.
Everything in life involves some degree of risk. I’m OK with having convenient car driving options and incurring a higher degree of risk as a result. A small number of deaths does not make me feel generally “unsafe” on the roads and I will happily take the reduced travel times as a trade off. The CDC’s data also indicates that vehicle related injuries and deaths have been falling since the 1980s, unrelated to recent traffic calming measures. I bet this trend will continue with rapid declines caused by the standardization of back up cameras, collision avoidance, lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, and so on. I don’t think it is worth trying to optimize for perfect safety when we already have good-enough safety, and we should retain fast travel times instead of letting the boogeyman of safety rule all decisions.