[sophia01]

> 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

[rwyinuse]

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.

[teiferer]

A major reason for the substantial difference in life expectancy at birth between the genders. It becomes more even above 30-40.

[unangst]

̶B̶o̶n̶u̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶s̶-̶ Additional sadness

[mmasu]

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

[squidgyhead]

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.

[devjab]

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.

[Sharlin]

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.

[atoav]

> 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).

[normie3000]

Could we recreate these optimum safety conditions by legislating for ice-feel tires? Then everyone would be in the slippery mindset all year.

[Teever]

You seem to be suggesting that frozen roads paradoxically make for safer driving?

Is that a fair characterization of your comment?