Only one in five motorists follow speed limits near schools, according to a new survey for the Finnish Road Safety Council.
The council used a speed gun to record road users' speeds at crossings near schools in Helsinki, Oulu, Rovaniemi and Turku. The speed limit was 30 km/h in the locations surveyed, and they recorded the speed of 3,316 cars.
Of those, some 80 percent broke the speed limit, with 19 percent more than 11 km/h over the limit.
The council also surveyed attitudes towards road safety via interviews with motorists. This year's version suggests that three in four found the speed limits too low.
At the same time, nearly every respondent said they felt it was important that speed limits were adhered to near schools.
The council's head of training Lari Mäkelä said speed limits are an important component of road safety.
"When a driver breaks the speed limit, he makes a decision to break the traffic rules and increase others', in this case childrens', danger," said Mäkelä in a press release.
"Repeated breaking of speed limits or adhering to them is often a fixed habit, which quite a lot of people should learn to break."
Finnish children go back to school this week, having been off since early June.
Norstat conducted the survey for the Road Safety Council. They asked 2,015 individuals about their habits, and 71 percent of those were motorists.
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EDIT 14.8: The sentence "Of those, some 80 percent broke the speed limit, with 19 percent more than 11 km/h over the limit" was changed from "Of those, some 80 percent broke the speed limit, with 19 percent more than 11 percent over the limit."