How Helsinki cut its traffic deaths to zero

Fast Company

a day ago

Helsinki just went a whole year—between July 2024 and July 2025—without a single traffic death.
Compare that to Washington, D.C., a city with roughly the same population of close to 700,000. In D.C., 52 people died in traffic in 2024, including a 12-year-old hit by a car in a crosswalk and a visiting doctoral student who was hit by a car while riding his bike.
Helsinki wasn't always as safe: the 1980s, the city typically had around 1,000 injury-causing car crashes each year, and 20 to 30 fatalities. But the city has been working to make its streets safer for decades. Here's what worked.
Slashing speed limits
On the majority of streets in Helsinki, the speed limit is now 30 kilometers per hour, or roughly 19 miles an hour. That's down from 50 kilometers per hour (30 mph) in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, the average speed limit dropped to 40 kilometers an hour (25 mph). Since then, the city has continuously added 30-kilometers-an-hour zones, including a recent rollout near schools. Around 60% of city streets now have that speed limit.
With lower speeds, any crashes that do happen are less severe. If someone is walking across the street and hit by a car driving 30 miles an hour, they're as much as eight times more likely to die than if they're hit at 20 miles an hour.
The city also went farther and shrank car lanes so drivers would feel uncomfortable speeding. 'Reducing speed limits isn't always enough,' says Roni Utriainen, traffic engineer at the City of Helsinki's Urban Environment Division. Most of its car lanes are now a little more than 11 feet wide; some are narrower. (In the U.S., lanes are typically at least 12 feet wide.) On some streets, trees are planted close to the edge of the road to help it appear even narrower. A Johns Hopkins study argues that shrinking American car lanes would also help reduce crashes.
Automated traffic cameras—and fairer fines
Dozens of cameras throughout Helsinki catch speeders and send automated tickets. A study in 2023 at one enforcement site found that the cameras work well; the number of drivers that were excessively speeding dropped by more than half.
In Finland, unsafe drivers are fined based on their income. If someone's driving more than 20 kilometers (about 12 mph) per hour over the speed limit, their ticket will scale with their daily disposable income. In 2023, Anders Wiklöf, a multimillionaire, was fined €121,000 for driving 30 kilometers an hour (about 18.5 mph) above the speed limit. (A few jurisdictions in the U.S. tested similar income-based fines in the past, but found the system too complex and politically unpopular.)
Enforcement of traffic laws is a key part of reducing fatal crashes. San Francisco has a Vision Zero goal, like Helsinki, aiming for zero traffic deaths. But while San Francisco's goal, adopted in 2014, was to reach zero traffic deaths by 2024, fatalities actually grew in the city by more than 50%. A recent report found that lack of enforcement from the police was a key factor in the failure.
Better bike infrastructure and public transit
Around a third of commuters in Helsinki now use public transit, while 36% walk and 11% bike. That outcome wasn't guaranteed. In the 1960s, as car ownership was quickly growing, the city considered an American-style plan of razing its downtown, taking out its streetcar system, and building 200-plus-miles of highways. Voters rejected the proposal, and public transit kept growing.
The city continues to invest in public transit and recently added new tram lines. It's also continuing to build new separated bike lanes, with a planned network from all major residential areas to the city center. 'Some people don't even need to own a car because there's a good enough public transit system and they can walk or cycle,' says Utriainen.
With fewer cars on the road, and carefully-considered infrastructure for people walking and biking, it's safer, unsurprisingly, to walk or bike. Plus, having more pedestrians and cyclists on the road means that drivers know that they have to look out for them.
Continuous improvement
Whenever a fatal crash happens in Finland, a team of experts investigates the incident, including traffic engineers. They look not only at what the driver and victim did, but how the environment contributed. If a particular intersection is unsafe—and especially if it's been the site of repeated accidents—the city takes steps to redesign it.
The city continues to face new challenges. The number of large SUVs is increasing, for example, and larger cars are more likely to cause serious injuries or kill someone in a crash. 'That's something we'll need to look at in the future,' says Utriainen.
Still, it's clear that the overall approach is working. In 2019, Helsinki had no traffic deaths for pedestrians or cyclists; this past year was the first with no traffic deaths at all, including people in cars. And for American cities that are struggling to reach Vision Zero goals, it offers evidence that things can change.