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Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

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Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#51

Post by Symbiote »

advantager wrote: post #8

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…

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

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#52

Post by DrScump »

dpark wrote: post #7
kinow wrote: post #6

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…

> I wonder if space agencies have agreed to build space vehicles on a standardized side. Because space vehicles often need to share space roads?

Not generally, but note that the Mars Climate Orbiter[0] was lost due to an SAE-Metric conversion failure:

[0] https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#53

Post by DrScump »

pzone wrote: post #34
kinow wrote: post #6

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…

I think self-driving cars will come sooner, in which case road handedness would be far less of an issue.

I can imagine a bad OTA update could someday result in some vehicles going rogue.

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#54

Post by DrScump »

yegle wrote: post #22

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

  There was an attempt in the 60s
Late 70s, I think (Carter administration). I remember those. As a kid I wondered, "will they put in kilometer-marker signs like the mile-marker signs on state roads?" (the small white ones near road level).

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#55

Post by perilunar »

bloak wrote: post #49
perilunar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That's hilarious. I wonder how traffic changes affect dogs and other animals that cross the road often?

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#56

Post by gnud »

felipemnoa wrote: post #11
kinow wrote: post #6

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…

>>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.

In primary school, we learned to look 'left, then right, then left again' before crossing. This is really muscle memory for me now.

That would have to be reversed in a country with left-side driving.

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#57

Post by perilunar »

fowl2 wrote: post #50
alkonaut wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes nearly every country is in some sort of hybrid state. In Europe you have the UK with one foot in the empire, but other countries also mix in e.g inches for tv’s, car wheel sizes and so on. It’s almost not a measurement, it’s more like a size scale (you don’t measure your wheels in absolute terms but you know what 19” rims look like compared to 17”). Ironically we put mm sized tyres on these rims. I think the US s…

It's funny, as an Australian, TV's are probably the only think I know exclusively in inches.

At one point TVs were in centimetres and computer monitors were in inches, but now they've seem to have given up and sell both in inches (which is probably against some regulation somewhere).

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#58

Post by wiredfool »

rootusrootus wrote: post #39
perilunar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ireland is 100% metric, yet you go into the grocery store and the butter is in 454g blocks.

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#59

Post by seszett »

wiredfool wrote: post #58
rootusrootus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ireland is 100% metric, yet you go into the grocery store and the butter is in 454g blocks.

That's because their main commercial partner (both because of geographical proximity and shared language which allows using the same packaging) isn't fully metric.

It used to be the same in Canada (or at least Québec) but I've heard that more products are sold in round metric quantities these days.

Re: Dagen H: The Day Sweden Switched Traffic Sides

#60

Post by anoncake »

kenneth wrote: post #18
chipperyman573 wrote: post #12

Earlier 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…

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…

> except I guess for people being right-handed more than left-handed, though has little effect.

Eye dominance is also a thing.

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