Sweden switched from left- to right-hand traffic overnight.

At 5 a.m. on 3 September 1967, every Swede suddenly drove on the right. In 1955, 83% had voted to keep left, but Norway and Finland drove right and over 90% of Swedish cars had left-hand steering. On Day H there were only 157 minor accidents. The caution faded: by 1969 accident rates were back to previous levels.

Useful: Big switchovers often go more smoothly than feared, because everyone is briefly hyper-alert.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

KulturenSchwedenVerkehr

Difficulty:

Related cards

More lanes don't make the traffic jam smaller.Widen a road and travel time drops briefly. That very drop attracts new trips: people switch from …
Why trains used to stop dead at the Spanish border.About 60% of the world's railways use standard gauge, 1,435 mm, the width of George Stephenson's …
In Ethiopia the year has 13 months and the clock says 2018.The Ethiopian calendar has twelve 30-day months plus a thirteenth, Pagume, of five or six days. New …
How to find an address in Japan when streets have no names.Japanese addresses run from large to small: prefecture, municipality, district (chōme), block …
English didn't lose its formal "you", it lost its informal one.Linguists call the choice between familiar and polite pronouns the T–V distinction, after Latin tu …
In 1712, Sweden had a 30th of February.From 1700 Sweden tried to ease from Julian to Gregorian by skipping every leap day for 40 years. …
The first long-distance car trip refuelled at a pharmacy.On 5 August 1888 Bertha Benz drove roughly 106 kilometres from Mannheim to Pforzheim without …
The bicycle exists because a volcano killed the horses.After the 1815 Tambora eruption, harvests failed in 1816 and tens of thousands of horses starved or …

Keep reading

This card belongs to the topic Language & World. Every card is short, cites a source and can be saved – due ones come back by themselves later.

About Doomlearn · Projects · Legal notice · Privacy · Terms