Now UK and Japan can give it a try. ;-)
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.
Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 dri…
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.
Why do you have to drive closer to the inside of the street?
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#33The 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
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#34Would 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…
I think self-driving cars will come sooner, in which case road handedness would be far less of an issue.
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
Burma is a fascinating story. They switched, like Sweden, but without planning. The reason? A fortune teller said the country would be prosperous. And now people exit the bus into the traffic instead of the sidewalk. Because nobody has the money to replace the buses or cars.
That is fascinanting. Can you provide a source for this story about a fortune teller?
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#36Now 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
It's inevitable that you will switch, you are just making it much more painful than it needs to be.
Did you notice that the SpaceX webcasts only use metric for the speed and altitude displays?
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why do you have to drive closer to the inside of the street?
Probably because you are routinely driving within a few feet of traffic coming the other way and it's easier to tell where the edge of your vehicle is when you're practically sitting on it versus sitting on the other side of the car.
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#38Now 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
The US is already switching to metric by 1% per year.
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#39Now 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
It's inevitable that you will switch, you are just making it much more painful than it needs to be. Did you notice that the SpaceX webcasts only use metric for the speed and altitude displays?
The only people that think it's painful are the folks who keep telling us we need to switch. We know the measurements we use pretty well, and even then there are plenty of things already measured in metric.
Plus, it's not like everyone else has fully switched. The UK still seems perfectly comfortable talking about weight in stones and all their cars measure speed in mph just like the US.
Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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 You should always look both ways regardless of which side a car is driving on. Reason is that bicycles sometimes drive in the opposite direction as cars. Also, sometimes cars, for whatever reason, will drive in reverse.
I think they're referring to places like roundabouts where you can cross halfway and the traffic only comes from one direction. Cars would never reverse off a roundabout and it's illegal and pretty dangerous to bike into a roundabout from the wrong direction.
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