Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides(amusingplanet.com)

124 points by Clepsydra 7 years ago | 81 comments

advantager 7 years ago |

On most mining properties in North America and elsewhere, driving is strictly on the left. This is because haul trucks have such large blind spots to their right side, it's best to give them a clear view of the side of the road (which may be a sheer drop-off).

I've done a fair amount of driving on site, and it's a bit of a trip. Usually right after the main gate there is a cross-over point where you yield and switch sides. And don't forget to drive on the right after you leave for the day!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/31603030@N08/24313254363

kwhitefoot 7 years ago | |

I heard somewhere that it used to be common in northern Italy to buy right hand drive cars (steering wheel on the right) for the same reason, it was better to have the driver at the edge of the road so that they could tell if they were too close to the edge on mountain roads with poorly defined edges and without crash barriers.

jacobush 7 years ago | | |

And the same in Sweden but the other way around - most cars had the steering wheel on the left even before driving on the right. Traditionally, it was better to be able to see where the narrow roads ended.

chipperyman573 7 years ago | |

Interesting, I didn't know about the blind spot problem for trucks. Is there a reason we drive on the right in America, then? I kind of assumed we just randomly picked it because neither answer solves a problem with the alternative (or the country we copied randomly picked, I don't know the full history), but it seems like there's a pretty solid argument to always drive on the left (at least, there's no reason to drive on the right)

kenneth 7 years ago | | |

The fact that we drive on the right is the precise reason why trucks have less of a blind spot on the left. (We place the driver's seat closest to the center of the road, while on a mine site it's better to be close to the edge of the road.)

If we drove on the left and built cars accordingly, then you'd see mine site tricks driving on the right.

Left and right are not inherently different in any way (except I guess for people being right-handed more than left-handed, though has little effect.)

Fun story: I was surprised recently by visiting one country that did things a bit differently: Burma. They drive on the right and have for 50 or so years… but they use mostly left-hand drive cars. So you'll see the driver's seat close to the curb. Took me quite a few taxi rides to figure out what that uncanny feeling was. (Also, they're one of the few countries with a timezone offset by a half hour increment)

paradisechris 7 years ago | | |

If America drove on the left, the driver side would be on the right instead. This would only shift the truck blind spot to the other side meaning they would still drive opposite either way.

m-i-l 7 years ago | | |

As the parent comment suggests, most people are right eye dominant so from a safety perspective keeping the dominant eye closer to the oncoming traffic is preferable. And even before cars, most right handed people mount horses from their right side, especially if they've a big sword on their left, and it is safer to mount from the side rather than the middle of the road. The story I learned when I was younger was that most of continental Europe, and the (at the time) pro-French US, shifted to the right because Napoleon was left handed, although it isn't quite that simple - see "Why do some countries drive on the left and others on the right?"[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869812 .

ip26 7 years ago | | |

Edit: redundant

billforsternz 7 years ago | |

I talked to a guy at a gas station once with an exotic wrong way round car. He owned it because he was a car lover, but had come to prefer driving close to the kerb. He also enjoyed the lolz as other drivers did a double take when it appeared his dog was driving and he was the passenger.

Symbiote 7 years ago | |

These are special vehicles. Why aren't they built with the steering wheel on the right?

kd5bjo 7 years ago |

See also, the day the US changed its rail gauge: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html

drallison 7 years ago |

I was in Sweden on the day they changed over. It was carefully planned. All of the signage was switched over night--old signs removed or covered and new ones revealed. I don't remember what was done for lane markings. Drivers had been practicing for months. Right-hand drive cars persisted for a while. Everything went surprisingly smoothly.

nemetroid 7 years ago | |

> I don't remember what was done for lane markings.

The Swedish Wikipedia article[0] mentions this. In conjunction with the change-over, lane markings went from yellow to white. This article doesn't mention it, but I recall reading that some roads had both colours during the transition.

0: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6gertrafikoml%C3%A4ggnin...

jacobush 7 years ago | | |

Thank you! Finally I get an explanation why in my youth some roads had yellow markings. I always thought the yellow markings was prettier.

1e-9 7 years ago |

A similar switch happened in 1970, when the Prime Minister of Myanmar suddenly and mysteriously decided that the country would switch to driving on the right-hand side of the road. The crazy thing is that the vast majority of vehicles today still have steering wheels on the right because the country has been buying used cars from Japan for years. Large vehicles like buses need a person acting as a spotter on the left side of the vehicle for safety! The Government finally mandated that, starting in 2017, imported vehicles must have steering wheels on the left side. Many drivers did not want to switch and thus there was a mad rush to buy cars in 2016, which the government was forced to counter by temporarily shutting-down imports.

nkrumm 7 years ago |

Fascinating. For some interesting US history on the topic, see: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/right.cfm

In particular I found this interesting: "[...] most American cars produced before 1910 were made with right-side driver seating, although intended for right-side driving [mirroring how horse-drawn carriages had been set up]. Such vehicles remained in common use until 1915, and the 1908 Model T was the first of Ford's cars to feature a left-side driving position."

kinow 7 years ago |

Would be great to have - someday - everybody driving on the same side of the road. I wonder if space agencies have agreed to build space vehicles on a standardized side.

I moved from a country that drives on the right lane, to one in the Commonwealth, driving on the left lane. It's interesting the amount of adjusting it takes for you as pedestrian to get used to which side to make sure to look to before crossing, and as a driver (roundabouts are especially challenging in the beginning).

And not all cars here have the seats on the right side. You can find cars that were imported and have the driver seat on the left. Or old/classic cars too.

PTRFRLL 7 years ago |

99% Invisible has a nice podcast on this:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/

yegle 7 years ago |

Now I wish US can switch to the metric system with a similar endeavor, but surely it's impossible now.

There was an attempt in the 60s to convert to metric in US. If you are in SF bay area, go check this out:

https://images.app.goo.gl/JBqNpATVWgwi2qFh8

perilunar 7 years ago |

The map in the article comes from (uncredited) the Wikipedia page 'Left- and right-hand traffic'. [0]

Btw, 35% of the world's population drive to the left, which is much larger than I thought.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

phillc73 7 years ago | |

> 35% of the world's population drive to the left, which is much larger than I thought.

India would be a huge proportion of that.

mjklin 7 years ago |

There was a song at the time to help folks remember: “Håll dig till höger, Svensson” (Keep to the right, Svensson) [0]

[0]: https://youtu.be/6ODZtwkBYPs

wallace_f 7 years ago |

Interesting:

>traffic accidents fell dramatically due to the extra caution people drove with

moltar 7 years ago |

Feels like The Big Rewrite, but successful

mixmastamyk 7 years ago |

Now UK and Japan can give it a try. ;-)

perilunar 7 years ago | |

Not going to happen. UK and Japan are both island nations (as are Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia), so there is no pressing need to change. And India is probably too large to change.

bloak 7 years ago | | |

And Pakistan won't change because the camels wouldn't agree.

That's the story I heard, anyway. They were considering the change but then someone pointed out that the camel caravans continue through the night with the driver asleep on one of them and the camels know which side of the road they go on and if you tried to argue with them about it, well, they can be cantankerous, apparently.

frosted-flakes 7 years ago | |

Switching today would be virtually impossible. Just think of all the freeway interchanges that would have to be rebuilt, costing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.

7952 7 years ago | | |

I think most interchanges would be fairly symmetrical. Although a lot of bellmouths at junctions would need to be changed to accommodate HGVs. And lanes approaching roundabouts would need to be moved.

dboreham 7 years ago |

Blame Napoleon

seppin 7 years ago |

Of all things why does this keep getting posted here? Curious

dTal 7 years ago | |

It's an interesting question. A theory that occurs to me is that much of modern computing is the way it is due to network effects and historical baggage. We all fantasize of ways we could be doing things better, if only we could have a clean start. For us, the story of an entire country seamlessly jumping from a local optimum to a global one is practically pornographic.

tragomaskhalos 7 years ago | | |