
Dagen H: the day Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right (2018) - gscott
https://drivemag.com/news/dagen-h-the-day-sweden-switched-from-driving-on-the-left-to-the-right
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nemetroid
> 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.

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viburnum
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.

~~~
adamisom
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.

~~~
bonyt
It’s not your fault, Poe’s law strikes again. People are out there with pretty
extreme beliefs about the power of tax cuts, so it’s hard to satirize them.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

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sharpneli
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.

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yxhuvud
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.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
Why have an election if there is no intention to respect the outcome?

~~~
BurningFrog
Yeah, Sweden has referendums, and we do one every 1-3 decades, but they're
only "advisory".

Power rests 100% with parliament.

You ask "why?". It's a good question. The system is hard to defend logically,
but it is respected nonetheless.

~~~
bayesian_horse
It's naive to assume referendums are inherently more democratic.

The Brexit situation is one good example why. They posed the wrong question
and arrived at an answer the majority of both the voters and the parliament
are already deeply unhappy with...

If I wanted to grab power and rule as a dictator, I would hold referendums
every month. You just wouldn't like the questions or the rules...

~~~
yxhuvud
Strictly speaking though, UK also only have advisory referendums. If
parliament wanted to they could just ignore Brexit. Politically impossible
even if legal, though.

~~~
bayesian_horse
The British parliament seems to be ignoring Brexit just fine, it's just that
only the prime minister can stop it.

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martindbp
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!

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zemialite
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.

~~~
rags2riches
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.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar)

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fetus8
Incredible episode about this from 99% Invisible:
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/)

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z3ugma
A TV station commissioned a song contest for a jingle for Dagen H. Here's the
(very catchy) winner:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ODZtwkBYPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ODZtwkBYPs)

~~~
maaaats
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.

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madsohm
The (2018) in the title makes it seem like this happened just last year. The
article describing it is from last year. Dagen H was in 1968.

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hn_throwaway_99
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?

~~~
maaaats
Buses, trams etc. would also have the doors on the wrong side, so cannot just
switch side one day without any planning.

~~~
samus
And indeed, the article tells that they had to replace their trams by buses
with the right doors (pun intended) in some major cities, presumably until
they could fix the trams.

~~~
hrydgard
What actually happened in most cities was that the trams were shut down, which
was really unfortunate with hindsight.

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mixmastamyk
Too bad the others didn’t follow suit. Just dangerous having two sides to
drive.

