> The actual change took place at 4:50 AM and vehicles driving on the road at that time were instructed to change from right to left as they were driving.
This makes it sound haphazard. In practice, traffic stopped at 04:50, everyone had 10 minutes to carefully change side, and traffic resumed at 05:00. Also, all non-essential traffic was banned between 01:00 - 06:00.
Instead of a heavy-handed centralized government mandate like this they should have used a tax incentive to encourage people to drive on the other side.
This event is the perfect example of "heavy-handed" centralized government doing things right. In fact, I'm really scratching my head how you think it could be improved. edit: oh wait, this was sarcasm, right? Since obviously a tax incentive is a terrible tool for this. Sorry if I missed something.
Dagen H is a good lesson for why incremental solutions to climate change aren’t enough. Sometimes you need to change a lot of stuff simultaneously and for that you need decisive coordinated action.
Across the bay we have some jokes about this. My favourite goes something like this:
The Swedes decided to make the switch gradual to make it easier to learn. Heavy trucks switched driving directions one week before rest of the traffic.
A couple of years before we had an election about what side to drive on. The right side actually lost the election. The politicians promptly (and legally) ignored it and went ahead anyhow. And that is a good thing.
Just a fun fact: my father had to go to the hospital by ambulance that day to take out his appendicitis. So for my own sake I'm glad it was so well planned!
In Finland there was a joke that in Sweden they changed from driving on the left to the right by steps. Trucks and other heavy vehicles changed first and others one year afterwards.
That's a funny joke. It reminds me of how Sweden actually tried changing to the Gregorian calendar in steps, by skipping leap days for 40 years. Yes, that would make the Swedish calendar to be different from the rest of the world for four decades and the difference to the other world calendars would be changing every four years...
It did not go according to plan. But it's the reason February of 1712 in the Swedish calendar did have 30 days.
Never heard of this, but my last name (and my dad's) is Svensson. Will tell him this next time I'm in the car with him on the highway and he's driving in the left lane, and see if he gets the reference.
I found this really intriguing, and unfortunately can't understand the linked video in Swedish, but I'm really confused about how they did this with the huge amount of physical infrastructure that would have needed to change. After all, there are a lot of road features (e.g. many styles of ramps and turn lanes) that aren't symmetrical, so switching sides would have required a ton of construction. How did they accomplish this so quickly?
You have received replies already, but there are at least some pieces of non symmetrical infrastructure from that era that remain.
I live in Gothenburg, where trams are still one of the major forms of public transportation. There's at least one (presumably more) stop where the trams turn around that's quite inconvenient because it's built for left side driving:
If you want to board a tram that's turned there and will go back north, you can't do so at the platform where passengers usually wait. You have to cross the street, since the tracks actually don't connect to the main route until after the regular passenger platform.
All in all, things like that are quite rare. I guess a lot of our infrastructure - particularly highways, was built after the switch.
It took three years of planning to accomplish. Plus it was in the 1960s when there were fewer and slower cars, fewer motorways and generally fewer explicit markings.
They were remarkably clever to realize that they needed to switch before building motorways for several decades. The costs weren’t astronomical but today they would have been.
[+] [-] nemetroid|6 years ago|reply
This makes it sound haphazard. In practice, traffic stopped at 04:50, everyone had 10 minutes to carefully change side, and traffic resumed at 05:00. Also, all non-essential traffic was banned between 01:00 - 06:00.
[+] [-] viburnum|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliwarner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamisom|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viburnum|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharpneli|6 years ago|reply
The Swedes decided to make the switch gradual to make it easier to learn. Heavy trucks switched driving directions one week before rest of the traffic.
[+] [-] yxhuvud|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaffeemitsahne|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denzil_correa|6 years ago|reply
Curious - why is Left Hand Traffic better than Right Hand Traffic?
[+] [-] sngz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martindbp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemialite|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rags2riches|6 years ago|reply
It did not go according to plan. But it's the reason February of 1712 in the Swedish calendar did have 30 days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar
[+] [-] gorm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fetus8|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3ugma|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaaats|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madsohm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scbrg|6 years ago|reply
I live in Gothenburg, where trams are still one of the major forms of public transportation. There's at least one (presumably more) stop where the trams turn around that's quite inconvenient because it's built for left side driving:
https://www.google.com/maps/@57.6780363,12.0042818,149m/data...
If you want to board a tram that's turned there and will go back north, you can't do so at the platform where passengers usually wait. You have to cross the street, since the tracks actually don't connect to the main route until after the regular passenger platform.
All in all, things like that are quite rare. I guess a lot of our infrastructure - particularly highways, was built after the switch.
[+] [-] sitharus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaaats|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|6 years ago|reply