Dagen H

I’m always a little bit startled when I only just learn something that was a major deal for millions of people at the time. It makes me wonder what else I’ve been blissfully ignorant of. A lot, I’m sure. That’s unsettling.

And so it was that a friend told me that Sweden switched from left hand traffic to right hand traffic on September 3, 1967. It was called Högertrafikomläggningen, which translates as “the right-hand traffic diversion” and is fortunately referred to as Dagen H (Day H) for short.

The reason Swedish Parliament chose to make that change, despite the public not being too keen on it, is that all the neighboring countries were driving on the right, and oddly enough, the vast majority of Swedish cars had the steering wheel on the left already, so right hand driving would give them a great deal more visibility.

It cost a lot to make the change. 350,000 signs had to be faced in a different direction. Stop lights had to be moved. Intersections had to be changed, and road paint had to be altered. Even bus doors had to be put on the opposite side of those vehicles.

It took even more prep work than I’m describing, but ultimately they made the change in very orderly fashion. If yours was one of the few essential cars on the road at 4:50 am on Sunday, September 3, 1967, you had to come to a halt. You then moved your car from the left side of the road to the right, and you waited until 5:00 am, to give everybody time to do the same. And then off you went, driving on the right. Ta-da!

Discovering this made me wonder how many other countries have changed their driving sides. It seems that 165 countries drive on the right side, and 75 countries drive on the left. (I wasn’t expecting so many lefties, but there you have it. They account for about 1/6^th of the land area, and 1/4^th of the roads.)

But of all of those, most have stayed with the side they started with. Who can blame them. But there have been 52 countries which switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. On the other hand, there have been, believe it or not, five countries that have switched to driving on the left. The change seems to have been made either due to a change in their colonial status, or a desire to be able to buy cheaper cars from their left side driving neighboring countries. The five that made the switch, because I know you’re wondering, are East Timor, Namibia, Nauru, Samoa, and Suriname.

An interesting little tidbit that I came across is that here in the US there was no fixed rule until a keep-right law was passed in 1792, and then it only applied to the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike. New York didn’t hop on the bandwagon, so to speak, until 1804. New Jersey did it in 1813, and Massachusetts in 1821. And even though the US Virgin Islands are a US territory, they drive on the left. That’s unusual, because most colonial entities follow the way of their occupiers. Go figure.

I have never driven on the left, and would be afraid to try. My mild dyslexia confuses me enough without making that change. I’ve only visited a left hand driving country once, and that was to change planes in England. I had to take a shuttle to my next plane, and as I had just gotten off a transatlantic flight, I was pretty exhausted. So when I looked up to see another shuttle coming at us on the “wrong” side of the road (from my perspective), I nearly screamed.

I bet they get that a lot.

Sources for this post:

http://realscandinavia.com/this-day-in-history-swedish-traffic-switches-sides-september-3-1967/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic