I know of this one single intersection in northern Stockholm that still enforces left-hand traffic:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/uGWr28JUQnEh9cXc6
Högertrafikomläggningen
111–120 of 190 posts
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#112Having a non-binding referendum and moving against the 85% vote takes balls. And we're forever greatful that they did. Presumably people thought it would be inconvenient and voted no, while politicians realized the cost of doing it later would be much larger than just ripping the band aid off. At the time, the number of massive motorway crossings and similar was probably nearly zero. Today the cost would be unimagina…
It's funny. It took cowardice to declare the referendum, and then they were forced into having even bigger balls than if they had done the right thing in the first place.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you already drove cars where drivers sit left side as Wikipedia says, what exactly were those 85% thinking about? Clearly not road safety?
I think a large part were just ”no” to anything. Few I imagine were against right hand traffic but many simply resisted change. Only just half of voters voted, however.
NIMBYism in a nutshell.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#114Maybe the world should standardize on: Driving on the right Speaking English The metric system The 2024-06-09 date format The Celsius scale The 24-hour clock
> Speaking English That’s the opposite of what we should do. If a plant monoculture is susceptible to diseases, then a language monoculture is susceptible to mind-viruses. What would the world look like now if every country spoke German in 1933?
That was already sort of the case though, at least among the intellectuals.
Up until WWII, a huge part of the scientific discourse was held in German. The language's relevance had waned a bit by 1933, but it was still a widely spoken and understood language in Europe, much more so than today.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#115Having a non-binding referendum and moving against the 85% vote takes balls. And we're forever greatful that they did. Presumably people thought it would be inconvenient and voted no, while politicians realized the cost of doing it later would be much larger than just ripping the band aid off. At the time, the number of massive motorway crossings and similar was probably nearly zero. Today the cost would be unimagina…
My optimistic take on this is that the politicians of the time had the actual peoples' best interests at heart and realized that even though the change was unpopular, it was the right thing to do and that people would eventually realize that. I'm sure very few of those 83% held their opinion a few years after the change.
Also 83% is really a lot... While seemingly obviously correct now, the vast majority didn't see it that way then. I can only assume that If I was there I would be against it too.
Nowadays with mass media and powerful almost immediate public reaction to government, such "you'll thank me later" moves seem less likely, and arguably, we are worse off for it.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly the same as today, if that was the only difference? Same language is a result of cultural similarity much more so than a cause for it. If there is no political or cultural pressure to speak the same language, they relatively quickly diverge.
What I was implying is, language barriers are a firewall against charismatic, manipulative psychopaths trying to brainwash you into doing unspeakable things. They do so by turning "he has a point" into "who is this funny little moustache guy and why does he sound so angry?"
I'd argue lacking a shared global language is more likely to isolate a population and ensure they can only hear the local mustache man's narrative.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#117The somewhat hidden (non financial) cost seems to have been giving up on some of the existing public transport services - like trams. The Wikipedia article mentions that briefly towards the end.
The trams were already on the way out in the 1950's, they were seen as a thing of the past that were inhibiting the development of the new car-centric urban areas. Several systems closed well before H-day, in the 50's and early 60's. The ones that closed on or around H-day were mainly in Stockholm and in Helsingborg.
In Stockholm, plans had been made as early as the 1940's to gradually replace the tram network with the metro, and that did in fact happen. Today's green and red metro lines do in fact use old tram line alignments to a pretty significant extent (the younger blue line was all new and mostly blasted out of the bedrock deep underground). In 1957 the city council formally decided that the tram networks should be gone by the mid-1970's, at which time most of the infrastructure and rolling stock would have been considered end-of-life. All H-day did was accelerate this by a couple of years. Two suburban lines were kept though and they survive to this day, but at least up until the 1990's their future was kind of uncertain. Things finally changed in the mid-90's, and new light rail alignments started to get built again.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#118The "see also" section links to a similar changeover in Okinawa which mentions that a country having more than one traffic direction is in violation of the Geneva convention (on road traffic) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention_on_Road_Tr...
If this is a violation, the United States needs to fix its own problem. Left driving is the rule in the US Virgin Islands, and it's especially dangerous because (like Sweden before 1967) most cars there have left-hand steering and the roads are narrow.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#119Making everyone speak English should not happen! We need to understand that the language you are able to think in - limits your thinking. Some languages have things you cannot translate into English. These non translateable concepts do not exist in the Western world view point.
Sapir-Whorf is nonsense.
It is a shame you are unable to appreciate the irony of this comment.
Re: Högertrafikomläggningen
#120When I was trainee in Stockholm in the 1980s most (if not all) escalators in the metro still run such that you had to take the left one.
Still on escalators everywhere, if you're standing, you stand on the right. If you're passing, you pass on the left.
In Tokyo it's common to stand on the left and pass on the right.