One of the other things you notice as you drive in Finnish towns that are further up in Finland is that people drive like maniacs.

Well actually not, the problem is that that don't drive like the people I'm used to in the Helsinki region and this can cause problems as they do things which people in the Helsinki region don't do.

One thing they do is drive very slowly.

We were in Seinäjoki for a day on the way up. The entire centre (so the middle plus maybe 1-2 kms in every direction) of the town had a forty kms/hour limit.

Now I imagine that you are thinking of an old town with narrow, crowded streets and imaging this speed limit was justified. Not a bit of it; these were wide boulevards often with space for cars parked on either side of the road AND two lanes still available in each direction. [Aside: they were also VERY empty of traffic]

In Helsinki such roads both don't exist anywhere near the town centre (in fact I can't recollect seeing anything so wide) and if they did exist they would be 50 or 60 limits not 40.

But that's not all. In Helsinki all the traffic would be driving at 10 kms/hour more than the speed limit. Part of this would be to allow for the car's speedometer to show slightly more than the real speed and the rest of it a calculation that the cops wouldn't bother with you if you were a mere 5 kms/hour above the speed limit. [Which - with very few exceptions like driving directly in front of a marked police car - is what is likely to (not) happen.]

In Seinäjoki, despite those amazingly wide roads, the traffic was indeed driving at 40.

Well, that's not that difficult to get used to even if it seems completely mad, but then those cars stop at pedestrian crossings without lights to let people across. Thus giving the driver of the Helsinki car driving behind then a heart attack because he had reckoned that just as in Helsinki the car in front wouldn't stop unless the waiting pedestrian in question happened to be a drop-dead gorgeous blond female (and the driver a healthy male) and even then in 50% of the cases the car in front wouldn't stop.

Because you see in Helsinki (and in the entire Helsinki area) you not only drive as fast as the speed limit says (plus 10% on the meter) but you virtually never stop for anything except a traffic light that has been at red for quite a while before you arrive at it (or another car because Helsinki does have quite a lot of traffic and thus the occasional mini jams)

Whereas it may be true that if you knock over someone crossing a non-traffic-lighted pedestrian crossing it's your fault, pedestrians in the Helsinki area are not prepared to die to prove that the driver is in the wrong so they wait at the side of the road until they can walk across the crossing without even causing oncoming cars to slightly brake.

You naturally get used to this. partly because if old (foreign) habits die hard and you do stop and wave people across, they are likely to regard you with some wariness - if that is they are looking in your direction at all and are not just ignoring you while waiting for a gap in the traffic.

It's the same thing when turning right. If there's no bicycle coming from the right or left (it can be either and those madmen don't give cars right-of-way) then you turn to the right. Further up the country the cars stop and wait for the person to cross the road even if they haven't quite made it to the corner yet.

The result was that even as a pedestrian I had a lot of problems. I was hanging around at a crossing just waiting for the cars to drive past and they didn't come past me. Yes, they were still stopped there waiting for ME to cross.

Like I said, they're mad outside the South. Certainly both as a driver and as a pedestrian I muttered to myself often enough "they're all mad".