Zero road deaths in a full year: Helsinki sets new milestone

Helsinki has completed a full year without a single traffic-related death, a remarkable achievement for a major metropolitan area and a model for urban road safety, municipal officials revealed this week.

The last fatality in the Finnish capital's metropolitan area, which has a population of 1.5 million, was recorded in July 2024.

The accomplishment is a result of a decades-long "Vision Zero" policy, which aims to eliminate all traffic-related deaths and serious injuries. A key factor, according to Roni Utriainen, a traffic engineer with the city’s Urban Environment Division, is the implementation of lower speed limits.

Since 2021, most of Helsinki's residential areas and city center have a speed limit of 30 km/h, a reduction from the previous 50 km/h. Data from Liikenneturva, Finland's traffic safety entity, shows that the risk of a pedestrian fatality is halved if a car’s speed of impact is reduced from 40 to 30 km/h.

In addition to stricter speed limits, the city has pursued a comprehensive urban development strategy. This includes:

• Infrastructure investment: The city has built a comprehensive network of cycling paths spanning over 1,500 kilometers and expanded its public transportation system with decarbonized and self-driving buses.
• Urban design: Roads in many parts of the city have been narrowed, and trees have been planted with the deliberate aim of making drivers more cautious by creating more complex urban landscapes.
• Enforcement: The city has installed 70 new speed cameras and a policing strategy focused on its Vision Zero policy.
• The data confirms the success of these measures. Statistics show that between 2003 and 2023, the number of traffic-related injuries in the city dropped from 727 to just 14.

Helsinki’s success is being closely watched in Brussels, where the European Commission is pushing to curb road fatalities across the EU.

Although road deaths in the EU as a whole dropped by 3 percent in 2024, most member states are reportedly not on track to meet the EU’s goal of halving traffic fatalities by 2030. In 2023, 7,807 Europeans lost their lives in traffic accidents in EU cities, with Berlin recording 55 fatalities and Brussels nine.

Helsinki had previously achieved a similar milestone in 2019, when no pedestrians or cyclists were killed in automotive collisions. The current achievement marks the first time the city has gone a full year without any traffic fatalities.