Reckless drivers

Traffic accidents with young adults have lately been on the rise in Finland.

Alcohol is unfortunately all too often involved in the serious accidents involving younger people and sadly enough you too often read or hear about accidents with young men as drivers. Young men with fresh driver's licenses here in Finland, at least according to statistics, seem have a knack for driving fast and recklessly. Therefor it now is discussed whether or not to, reinstate the 80 kms per hour limit with a label about it on the rear window that used to be the standard for fresh driving license holders in this country.

And the pro's and cons for this seems to go on endlessly. I am told that some driver's used to get a compulsion to overtake cars with these speed limit labels on the most dangerous road stretches, and that many did not bother to keep their sticker on the window of their cars.

But then on the other hand, more experienced elder drivers are no safer with impaired eye vision and longer reaction time.

Smoking prohibited in your own car

Finland is going to prohibit smoking in cars when children under the age of 18 are present some day in the near future.

This has already been done in some other countries I do not remember currently, which seems fair enough, we have to protect our children, but what bugs me about it is that you won't be fined or charged with anything if you smoke in your car here in Finland

Prohibiting smoking in cars will be just as useless as talking on your mobile when driving, which also is prohibited by law, but who bothers to use a hand-free appliances when driving anymore, as nothing is done about it?!?

Smoking in restaurants just was banned, you are not allowed to smoke on the premises anymore but still when you are in a restaurant, you are still allowed to smoke in the outdoor decks and terraces. Or is that not on the premises?

Just another useless law, just ordinary paper pushing again to keep the politicians occupied. People will still smoke in their cars, and talk on their mobiles, when driving...no matter whether it is against the law or not.

At least they have not been able to ban people to smoke on their own balconies yet here in Finland, but seems likely that day will come too.

Bearings right

Finally, we have got some snow here in southern Finland as well, and the falling snow of course once again surprised all drivers as is the custom.

Strange thinking that Finland usually has cold winters with snow during the winter and every year it takes the motorists by surprise, and 70 fender benders were reported by the police yesterday. The snow has continued falling on and off but according to the last weather report I was listening to the temperature is expected to rise again by the end of the week. This might mean we just had a quick visit by the winter snow.

Things are always relative, when they say it will be colder and one expects for it to become real cold, subzero temperatures but they are just talking about a few degrees. It all depends on who you are, what you are used to and where you are. When it is to cool down a bit the temperature drop can be anything between an average 15 and a couple of degrees at least according to the weather report.

Another thing I now know where it is is mid-Finland.

it was not until quite recently that I found out where it really is and it was puzzling and sometimes even annoying when the meteorologist on TV referred to what I considered as mid-Finland around the height of Vaasa-Kuopio-Lieksa being referred to as northern Finland. Now bearing in mind that Lapland begins just around Oulu, and that is also divided into southern and northern parts it suddenly came clear to me.

Finland is divided into two halves, Finland and Lapland and both have southern and northern parts of course!

It is like comparing it to the United Kingdom, if you are talking about England then you are not actually referring to neither Scotland, Wales nor Northern Ireland, just the one small portion of Britain. Like when people are talking about going to England when they visit Scotland or Wales as well.

So at least I now have got my bearing right!

In a hurry

Visitors often are surprised by seeing the Finnish pedestrians docilely standing waiting for the red light to switch to green and go mode, even with no cars driving past the Finns still patiently wait.

I am not sure whether the Finns are just that law obedient, or if they just fall asleep when waiting. In many other countries, including the neighbouring ones, but especially further southwards in the Europe there is a tendency to just cross the street when no cars are coming when ever possible. But now it seems to be the season for jaywalking in Finland, these few days just before Xmas and no matter what city you are in the same go everywhere it seems.

Pedestrians crossing the busiest, most trafficked street in town on red, inpatient to wait for it to switch into green and the busiest and most stressed ones are the most dangerous and daring ones. They just cross the street anywhere not even bothering about the zebra crossings and right when they are in the middle of the street there comes either a car in high speed or a bus that has to avoid running over the daring pedestrians. Sometimes it looks like pigeons running over the street. These people putting their limb and health in danger are both men and women, and no difference in sexes here apparently. They are not the young ones as one would normally assume neither are they the teenagers, instead they are the normal, average middle aged citizens.

Women in their forties with their fur coats, hands full of shopping bags scurrying across the street. Men rushing in suits on their lunch breaks to get something done before time runs out, even older grandmothers slowly walking in the middle of the street waiving their walking sticks. Then there of course always is the odd “normal ones” trying to make a short cup to the liquor shop, if you get my drift.

This strange and rarely occurring phenomenon of Finns jaywalking is best observed when on foot, and not from a car passing by. The Finns somehow seem to be in heat now before Xmas, they do not have their normal patience with waiting and queuing, shifting foot, sighing and restlessness even at the cash automate waiting for your turn to withdraw some money to buy presents with.

People are so very much more inpatient than normal right now and we are here talking winter time when things tend to be more slow and tedious in every way with the prevailing lack of light. The normal pace is completely opposite to the spring out coming of all the beautiful summer butterflies shedding their winter cocoons of multilayered warm clothing and dressing colourful and light, even with the weather not agreeing on it.

Waterproof wrappings

Going for a drive out of town on a Saturday can sometimes be the strangest experience and as this Saturday was announced to be a car free day, which was not advertised especially well before hand. Many big cities had reduced their bus fare prices in order to get people using the buses instead of taking the car into town shopping, but nothing was anywhere told about the turn out of this campaign afterwards.

So our little planned trip out to the countryside became even stranger than it would have been on a normal planned Saturday drive in the countryside.

Anyway, getting out of a big city is always strange as the way people’s traffic behaviour gradually changes and every different town has its’ own traffic culture. The same rules and laws still apply in theory but not always in real life drivers act differently depending on if they are in the countryside or in a town and especially the parking is different, somehow more casual if not really peasant, sorry pleasant.

To really give you the picture of how our minds work, we act in different ways depending on if we are on foot as pedestrians crossing the street, cycling on bike or driving in our new car, it depends on your point of view whether you take the same chance crossing the street on foot or by car when the red lights are on. As long as nobody sees you, you are safe and sound; you have not broken any rules and can’t be fined for doing something nobody was there to see.

So we visited this big shopping centre in a small town with the usual chain shops and a big supermarket. All the cars were parked in rows very far from each other and you could walk in between the fronts of the car hoods, which never would have come in question in a big town as the space is limited and you have to make the best of the parking space you get. There also is no politeness here as to who is next in line to park the car in the next free space as in bigger towns and parking outside of the marked car parks also prevails, parking right next to it right in front of the entrance blocking the pathway outside the marked parking area.

Also the queuing culture in shops and supermarkets is different in the small country town compared to the bigger cities, no queuing culture there, just walking straight in front of people in line jumping the queue at the cashiers in the supermarket.

Surprisingly many small municipalities have bothered to apply to become towns here in Finland even though they have no real town centres, just houses cluttered together in between the pastures of the farmlands. No real harm there but than name town just seems a bit off here taken in consideration.

The absolute highlight of the weekend must have been the big advertisement for waterproof tea-bags that we saw passing by in our car. At least these teabags are bound to preserve the aroma and flavour of the tea in the teabags, and as they are waterproof none of it gets into the hot water the teabags are to be soaked in. So what's the use of the waterproof bags? I have no idea, except maybe you can re-use of the unused teabags?

Then there are the dishwasher tablets with a soluble plastic wrapping, that now has been introduced on the market. What is the use of the plastic wrapping as it is soluble in water? What do they protect the dishwasher tablets of, getting wet as you do not need to remove the wrapping when loading them into the dishwasher?!?

Speeding

There are several ongoing sports events in southern Finland, the Kalevan kisat which is the annual Finnish sport championships, a trotting event and the Finnish Neste Oil rally world championship race causing problems in the traffic as people are getting to and from the different locations. The strangest thing is that always when it is the time for the Finnish Neste Oil race more people than the average day get caught speeding.

And to tell you the truth jokes have been made already for years that there is a Mika Häkkinen, or Marcus Grönholm for that matter, living in every single Finnish man and this seems to be one of the times he steps out and takes control of the driving.

So far this weekend, and the race is still not over which probably means more are to speed today, at least 200 drivers got caught getting tickets for speeding with dozens of drivers having their licenses confiscated for having driven almost 100 kms more than the allowed speed limit on 100 kms.

The rally has also given the environmentalist something to do as yesterday demonstrators barricaded a street in the city of Jyväskylä to protest against the ongoing rally, even though the race itself was not even near the city at the time.

Now is also the beginning of the high season of mushroom picking and quite a lot of mushrooms exported to Italy as the Italians are very fond of their Porcini mushrooms, as I think they are called, and truck loads of them are actually picked in Finland and shipped to Italy to be sold and eaten there. So husband already went off to see about the Chanterelles so I probably have some mushroom cleaning to do later in the afternoon. And by the look in the woods yesterday when walking aournd the lake I want to get out and get some of these Porcinis as they are also delicious but for the time being our car is staying put parked.

Loose helmets

The use of mopeds amongst the young has increased and a couple of years ago a compulsory moped license was introduced. In order of acquiring the license you have to pass a written test about traffic regulations and safety. Sadly enough 14 adolescents were last year killed in moped accidents, and 5 of the victims lost their helmet in the accident. Wearing a helmet is compulsory according to law, both for the driver and the passenger riding on the moped.

According to the police many youngsters use their helmets but sadly they are not properly attached below their chins
becoming loose in a accident.

Well moped age is here so this is an issue much talked about for the moment. Not to wear your helmet, but to wear it properly attached to your head.