One city in Northern Europe just went an entire year without a traffic-related death. Officials from Helsinki, Finland, confirmed to the Finnish publication YLE that it hasn’t had a fatal accident since early July 2024, marking an impressive milestone for the Scandinavian coastal town.
The achievement doesn’t come from any one major policy shift, but rather a handful of small changes that added up to create a meaningful impact. “A lot of factors contributed to this, but speed limits are one of the most important,” Roni Utriainen, a traffic engineer for Helsinki’s Urban Environment Division, told YLE.
Earlier this year, Helsinki lowered speed limits near schools to 30 kilometers per hour (18.6 miles per hour). Now, more than half of the city’s roads carry that speed limit. Those same streets had a speed limit of 50 km/h (31 mph) 50 years ago, according to YLE.
It’s not just speed limits, of course. Infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians has been greatly improved, while more automated traffic enforcement systems (speed and red-light cameras) have been added. Combine that with more traffic police on watch, a robust public transit system, and modern in-car active safety tech, and the result is no deaths in 12 months.
Fatalities aren’t the only metric that’s fallen, either. Traffic-related injuries in Helsinki have also plummeted from nearly 1,000 yearly incidents on average in the 1980s to just 277 in the past year, says YLE.
Utriainen credits the efforts of city officials, but also of drivers, bikers, and pedestrians. “The direction has been positive for years,” he said. No pedestrians were killed in Helsinki due to traffic incidents in 2019, either.
Photo by: Getty Images
America, Take Notes
The US could learn from Helsinki. In 2023, over 40,000 people died in America from traffic-related incidents. Car-related deaths have been a focal point in major US cities for years, in an effort to curb injuries and fatalities.
Yearly data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows a downward trend in traffic deaths since the 1970s, with the rate of death bottoming out in 2014, with 10.3 people killed per 100,000 people. Since then, that number has grown to a high of 13 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, back down to 12.2 in 2023.
In 2014, New York City, America’s largest metropolitan area, famously enacted “Vision Zero,” a series of policies designed to drive down traffic fatalities. Those policies seem to work, with deaths decreasing steadily in the city until the Covid-19 pandemic, where fatalities saw a spike.
In 2024, 251 people were killed in traffic-related incidents in New York City. But so far, 2025 is the lowest year on record for traffic deaths in the metro, with just 87 fatalities recorded.
“The 32 percent drop in traffic fatalities that we have seen this year is historic,” said Mayor Eric Adams in a press release earlier this month. “It’s also further proof that our administration’s Vision Zero efforts are working. Strong enforcement against reckless driving is keeping pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers safe, and our administration will continue using all tools available to drive down traffic violence and deliver results that keep New Yorkers safe on and off our streets.”
