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Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right

. This transition, known as "Dagen H" (H-day), occurred on September 3, 1967. The "H" stands for "Högertrafik," the Swedish term for right-hand traffic.
Here's why the change was made:
Conformity:
Neighboring countries like Norway and Finland drove on the right, causing confusion and potential accidents at borders.
Increasing International Traffic:
As international travel grew, driving on the same side became more practical.
Most Cars Had Left-Hand Drive:
The majority of vehicles in Sweden were already manufactured with left-hand drive, making the transition more logical.
Safety:
While a major change, it was anticipated to improve overall road safety by aligning with the majority of European countries.

Do you think Australia will do the same?
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Ferise1

"also UK".

Very, very unlikely. It it would be so horrendously difficult and expensive, and not really necessary, that it to all intents and purposes it would be impossible.

A country can only make such a change if it is possible to do so overnight, or perhaps a weekend; and then only with a horrendous amount of planning and physical preparation.

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For a start the only driveable border between the UK and a non-UK nation is that between Ulster and Eire. Even if Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalist Party have their dreams come true the idea for any or all to switch to driving on the right would be absurd and totally impractical - and pointless.

All other border crossings involve a sea ferry or the cross-Channel Tunnel, and for the latter the cars are carried on trains, so there is a strong physical division between the roads. A lot of freight carried by the ferries does not even involve the driver going abroad. He and the tractor unit stay in ther own country while the ferry carries the trailer and load for picking up by the destination country's driver.

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Internally, most of the Ordnance Survey maps and the ordinary 4-inch scale road atlas reveal that for a comparatively compact area the British Isles likely has the world's densest, comprehensive and tangled road "network". It is much more labrynth than net, with several different road classifications; expanding rapidly as new housing and industrial estates are built; and much of it daily carrying a huge number of vehicles of all sorts and sizes.

Almost all roads and junctions above very minor rural lanes have a plethora of signs on posts and on the road surface; and those on the surfaces especially are all of left-hand lane indication.

All the bollards on lane-separation islands point "Keep Left".

The Motorways are all very comprehensively - and expensively - signed with enormous plain, illuminated and matrix indicators facing only their relevant lanes. The design of some of the more complicated junctions between motorways, and between them and the ordinary roads, may render them extremely difficult or impossible to reverse. They are by no means all nice pretty clover-leaf junctions. Moreover the country has been spending millions of ££ on "upgrading" major motorways to "managed" (colloquially, "smart") formats, which essentially mean variable speed-limits that can be changed to meet congestion conditions and obstructions ahead: using matrix signs and cameras all specific to their own carriageway, not both.

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That's the roads....

Vehicles too.

A change to left-hand drive would seriously affect not only all private cars and light commercials. For example, all local-service buses and long-distance coaches have nearside doors. Changing to driving on the right would mean their passengers then having to board and alight in the middle of the road, without a gigantic programme at astronomical cost to replace all the buses in the same ridiculously short time as that needed for swopping millions of road-signs around. What would happen to all those replaced cars, vans, buses, lorries, etc.? Even utility vehicles like road-sweepers too, would now be useless because they are made for cleaning the nearside of the street. Scrapped? A ridiculous and desperately unsustainable waste.

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Oh, and drivers would essentially have to re-learn driving, whatever their vehicles. We can cope with trips abroad where the differences all around us are obvious (even then, accidents happen when a visitor momentarily forgets) but I think adjusting to a completely new way of using our own roads every day, often in heavy traffic or bad conditions, would be far harder. Given the number of others having to do the same, very many accidents, near-misses and so-called "road-rage" incidents would be inevitable for quite some while.

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Finance?

The country could not afford the gigantic costs of not only converting all the roads but all the consequential costs of vehcile replacement, the road closures for the refitting, the related disruption, accidents, etc.

...

If The UK was ever to have changed to driving on the right - a concept apparently invented by Napolean Bonaparte when "Emperor of France", for military purposes - it could only have happened over 100 years ago when the road system was much less comprehensively developed and fitted (no motorways either!); and carried far, far fewer motor-vehicles.

...

So, no. Not "Also UK".
Ferise1 · 46-50, M
@ArishMell TLDR 😂
But there’s the Chunnel… they’ll probably have to change one day.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Ferise1 I have no idea what TDLR means and I have no idea what you found so amusing.

The "Chunnel" (I have not heard that word for years - almost everyone calls it the 'Channel Tunnel') is not a road-tunnel. Did you actually understand my explanation?
come2gether · 46-50, M
Someday I will visit Sweden, and a beautiful Swedish girl will immediately fall in love with me, and the rest of life will be a fairytale.

I've fired my astrologer, she told very cold lies
RunTheJulz · 46-50, F
Samoa: Switched from right to left in 2009, to align with neighboring countries like Australia and New Zealand.
Ferise1 · 46-50, M
@RunTheJulz funny
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@RunTheJulz Interesting: seems a bit pointless unless there are a lot of motorists from all three countries visiting each other.
RunTheJulz · 46-50, F
@ArishMell You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. Think about vehicular sales and how the industry now has a market that has uniformity.
YoMomma ·
No Australia doesn't have traffic driving into the country on the wrong side of the road so they don’t have to do that 😅
Ferise1 · 46-50, M
@YoMomma but maybe in the future. Also uk
YoMomma ·
@Ferise1 who knows ☺

 
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