
A ‘thrilling’ mission to get the Swedish to change overnight - dsr12
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180417-a-thrilling-mission-to-get-the-swedish-to-change-overnight
======
gumby
Okinawa switched back to driving on the left in 1978 shortly after the end of
US occupation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/730_(transport)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/730_\(transport\))
.

------
Y_Y
> A ‘thrilling’ mission to get the Swedish to change overnight (bbc.com)

Can we get an anti-clickbait headline policy? This was fifty years ago too.

~~~
JeremyBanks
We have one.

> _please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
FearNotDaniel
Original title is definitely linkbait and so I would say it warrants some kind
of prefix like "H-Day 1967: A ‘thrilling’ mission to get the Swedish to change
overnight".

It's a great story worthy of HN for anyone who hasn't already read about it
elsewhere; the prefix is enough to let those of us already familiar with the
story decide whether we can be bothered to click through to see if this
article adds any new insight.

~~~
Double_a_92
I'd also mention what was supposed to change.

------
toomanybeersies
More recently, Samoa switched from driving on the right to driving on the
left.

This change was so that they would be able to import cheaper Japanese used
cars.

~~~
disordinary
Probably used cars from New Zealand.

The reason they switched is that New Zealand dominates the south pacific as
both the largest donor of aid and also the biggest trading partner to most of
the pacific countries.

~~~
kirrent
Do you have a source on that? All sources I can find show Australia providing
about 5 times the aid as NZ. About what you'd expect given respective
populations.

MFAT doesn't appear to support your claims.
[https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/countries-and-
regions/pacific/#T...](https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/countries-and-
regions/pacific/#Trade)

~~~
disordinary
I don't have the numbers of total contributions, Samoa was historically an NZ
protectorate and there are 144,000 Samoans who live in NZ who send a big chunk
of their pay checks home, they also send a lot of money back to Samoa through
the Samoan church groups.

I tried to find the information on the total flow of money from NZ to Samoa
but the only things that I could find was the official government aid of $22.3
million, which compares to $35.8 million from Australia, but the aid from
private citizens would be massive.

Auckland has the largest Polynesian population in the world and for quite a
few pacific islands more of their citizens live in Auckland then back in their
homelands, people are expected to come here and work and send all of their
spare money back home.

------
pimmen
And yet when I ask my fellow Swedes to get rid of daylight savings I hear "it
would never work, you just can't make people switch habits like that
overnight" way too often.

The inertia of complacency is very hard to change through grass roots
movements, a big government decision like this is what's needed. Sweden voted
against changing to right hand side when there was a referendum about it so
the government had to force it.

~~~
bonesss
> "it would never work, you just can't make people switch habits like that
> overnight"

Heh, isn't switching habits overnight _literally_ what daylight savings time
is? To avoid all the problems what we need is for everyone to _stop_ changing
overnight.

I also head comments like that. I'm not sure what they think happened a
hundred years ago when this was implemented, or why our digital signage, real-
time communication networks, and mobile phones would make such an
implementation harder than it was then...

------
croon
My dad got his license the week before this happened. He remembers it not
being too difficult to relearn, but that the most impressive part of it was
the sign reworks, ostensibly overnight, which seems corroborated by the
article.

------
neverminder
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H)

------
azinman2
I feel like once a year something about this gets posted to HN.

~~~
techsupporter
OP was just one of today's lucky 10,000:
[https://www.xkcd.com/1053/](https://www.xkcd.com/1053/)

------
failedartifact
I first yeard about this thriugh 99% Invisible Podcast.

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/)

Its a great listen if anyone is interested more about the 'H-Day' switchover.

------
disordinary
Samoa did it in 2009 to switch from driving on the right to driving on the
left.

------
rjsw
I was there, though as I was only 18 months old I don't remember it.

------
vidoc
This is such an inspiring story! We need something along those lines to
changes two things Americans continue doing in isolation and against the rest
of the world: tipping and circumcision :)

~~~
blattimwind
Imperial system.

~~~
Nomlab
Logged in just to say the same. Metric system for life.

------
danharaj
The change was which side of the road they drive on.

