When My grandmother was giving birth to my father, she went to the hospital when swedes were driving on the left. After my father was born and they were driving home, they were driving on the right.
Ambrose Burnside I mean, that happens a lot on express lanes where they use gates to turn on and off entrances from the highway. Have you not seen this?
In a joke swedish authorities were planning this change from left to right to be done in two stages: in first stage only the heavy vehicles change lane and all others couple days later.
One interesting thing is that you can still notice some "artifacts" from that era when driving around Sweden today, especially on older motorways. When you come across an intersection where the entry ramps are way too short and the exit ramps are nice and long, that's because it used to be the other way around.
My grandfather told us a story about how my great grand mother was apparently very worried about how this whole switch thingy would go. My grandfather's brother joked and said "oh don't worry mom, the switch is only for trucks for the first week so we can get used to it before switching cars". Apparently it took my great grandmother a while to realize he was joking and was successfully calmed for a few minutes, before everyone burst our laughing xD
Dagen Högertrafik translates to "The day Right traffic". It's actually called "Högertrafikomläggningen" (yeah we hate spaces that is actually 3 words in one) which translates to "The right traffic change" #TodayYouFoundOut
As an American, I have very little opportunity to interact with people from other countries like you folks in Europe do. Thank you for sharing that tiny bit about the world you live in, and thank you for doing so in brilliantly perfect English.
Compound words are fun! Consider this little set of words: ekipage, garage, komage. rotmos, potatismos, plåttermos. :) Of course we have far worse traps for foreigners, like anden vs anden or tomten vs tomten. One I noticed at some point is how our grammar can produce fancy strings of consonants: västkustskt strandlandskap does indeed have 8 distinct consontants in a row. They're all pronounced without any vowels.
Interestingly, as a german speaker, i might have mistaken the word „höger“ with german höher which means „upper“ or rather „more up“. Whats also curious is how i didn‘t struggle to read the large compound word since we do the same with our words.
@@InschrifterOfficial Yeah, German compound words even became a meme. "This is a flugzugabwehrkanone. It kanones flugzugabwehr." Swedish has a few other quirks that tend to make it difficult for foreigners to learn, including having two object neuter terms, which also affect conjugation, and many words with very different meanings that are spelled, or pronounced the same, or both, as noted by LoneTech, "anden" can mean "the spirit" or "the duck"(pronounced and spelled identically), "tomten" can mean "santa claus" or "the lot/plot (of land)"(identical spelling but not pronounciation). The worst is probably the two neuters though, roughly aproximated in english as "it" or "that", and resulting in different "the" equivalent conjugated endings of words, it even affects the number one, which can be said two ways (think "a" or "an", except it's more like "one" or "a"), one umbrella = ett paraply; the umbrella = paraplyet; one car = en bil; the car = bilen. The rules for telling which one to use for which object are arcane at best, you basically have to learn the correct use for each word individually until you know enough Swedish that you can intuit the rest, what sounds right.
Bonus fact: Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad, eventually a member of ABBA, made her national debut on TV that evening having won a "New Faces" style competition organised by EMI Sweden. The first prize was a recording contract and a second, a surprise for the winning contestant, was being featured singing live on the TV talk show "Hylands hörna" - the audience for the programme being massive that evening as people stayed off the roads in order to avoid the potential chaos on the roads.
The day my grandfather stopped driving . born 1905 he said ,, I am getting old and it was a good day to quit :) and took the train the few years left to retirement
This always cracks me up: My father was the first one to get hit by a car. He's 80 in a couple of weeks and had been out partying. Looked the wrong way and ended up getting "bumbed" a bit by a car. No injuries and no damage to the car (they where still built like tanks back then) but he got mentioned in the news paper. My mother liked to remind him of it and well... He's not quite so fond of remembering it.
My dad went through driving school before the change - but, because of work, he was unable to take the test until the week after... No ideal preparations, but he passed. On the other hand, my mom who´ve had her license for ages had more trouble adapting even though she was more experienced.
When studying for my driver's license, I learned that there was a significant drop in accidents/kilometer driven for some time after högertrafikomläggningen. Many people revised their driving theory, some drove slower and more careful than normal, and quite a few old people decided to stop driving earlier than they otherwise would have. And of course, they took the opportunity to sneak in a couple of security measures, like removing the free choice of speed limit on countryside roads.
Living in the UK for several years I did notice that the keep-right idea seemed to be a more universal and natural human response. Somewhat in driving, but totally in walking on the sidewalks and climbing stairs. UK pedestrians invariably migrated to the right side of the sidewalk, and the same on stair cases. Buildings in my city had signs on every floor landing reminding people that they were Brits, and needed to move over to the left. Only about half did. It was as if they were subsconsciously pulled to the right - suggesting an atavistic convenience of the right-hand side.
I don't know where you lived but we pass on the left in Britain whilst walking and stairs in public places are marked "keep left". Your comment is inaccurate and invalid.
@@colinp2238 If you reread with a little more care what I wrote, you will notice that I said exactly what you went ahead and repeated as if it were news. Signs in UK stairways remind people, ascending and descending, to move over to the left. They wouldn't need to do that except that most people automatically drift over to the right. Why? Dunno - except that it is an observable occurrence (and thus the need for the signs everywhere). My point was that despite the UK's left-hand driving habit, the human tendency, at least of those right-handed folks, is to travel on the RIGHT. Sidewalks are another place where about 60% of native British pedestrians walk on the right - makes for quite a tangle of folks!
People naturally form three 'lanes' in pedestrian traffic: a middle lane and two outer lanes going the opposite direction. Ants also do this. For one direction, half of people will migrate away from the middle (half will go right and half will go left) and for the other direction, people will stick to the middle (not as far to the left as they 'should' be). Two-thirds of people will be walking right of the leftmost 'lane' and two-thirds of people will be walking left of the rightmost 'lane'.
I've never had any issues changing sides when I visit places like England and Australia except that I have to think very carefully what lane to turn in to at intersections. When I asked a Melbourne taxi driver about hook turns on the way in to town from Tullamarine he laughed, then told me the best way to figure them out was to watch others do it.
In my last trip to the UK, we visited the Lake District for a week. Some of the roads up there are just barely large enough for a *single* vehicle, so it makes it even more interesting when you encounter another vehicle. There are periodically places where you can pull slightly off to the side of the road and the rule seems to be that the first person to encounter such a place is the person to pull off to let the other one pass. Apparently, the roads are so narrow that they wouldn't even send the Google Maps vehicle along them to take StreetView images of them. Fun driving them though since they all have hedges along them and you often can't see around the curves. I don't remember seeing any speed limit signs, but I'm pretty sure the speed limit was a lot less than the speed I was driving. :)
Traffic side trivia: In Stockholm, at the intersection of Valhallavägen and Engelbrektsgatan, Engelbrektsgatan still has left side traffic (optimizing it for U-turns on Valhallavägen). This is obscured a bit by renaming a chunk of it and having all pieces marked as distinct one way streets.
My taxi driver near Varanasi India drove in the middle of the road and only pulled left when another car was oncoming. When I asked why he did this he said 'so the other cars can see me coming'
The Belgian department of transport has announced that right-hand driving will switch to left-hand driving on the 1st of April 2019. If everything goes well, trucks will also drive on the left side of the roads the week after ; )
Oh no, that's only Wallonia. And as a compromise, in Brussels everyone will drive in the middle. And during any future year plus periods without a government, only driving in reverse will be permitted.
@@Ruthlesscritic Have you heard about the roundabouts? Clockwise on even days and anti-clockwise on odd days expect in towns near the sea (for obvious security reasons).
There’s countries that drive on the same side as where their steering wheel is. For ex: Burma and Afghanistan have RHD cars but they drive in the right instead of left.
In Malta, they drive on the "shady" side of the road. Whether it is a dual carriageway or not, it's of no importance. In Cairo, the morning greeting is "Good Morning. Has your car been kissed today". Crossing Desert areas at night is also a heart stopping experience. If there is oncoming traffic approaching, both parties switch off their lights (not just go to low beam) completely, leaving both in courteous, if somewhat frightening, total blackness for a few critical seconds. That plus the myriad wild camels that don't recognise road markings and don't come with reflective jackets.
Nice, reminds me of how the southern US changed its railroad gauge in less than 48hrs in the late 19th century. Another great story you could cover .... hell, you probably already have!
I like to drive a manual gearbox car, it’s what my left hand is for, right hand on the steering wheel, this works nicely on the left hand side of the road. I drive in France, Belgium and Holland and have no problem when over there
Because you're used to it. For the rest of us it feels just as fine to have left hand on steering wheel and gearing with the right. I've also driven right hand side cars, and barring a bit of fumbling in the beginning, it works just as fine. Neither is better than the other
Interesting; i noticed such a van whilst in North Dakota few years ago, and the driver gave this correct explanation. Similarly in the UK there are LHD vehicles that sweep the gutters of roads.
There's a lot of country highways that have a single passing lane. Some switch between sides and others (depending on the state) can be used by both directions at any time. Definitely do not use in poor visibility.
Where I live, a lot of people seem to do that already. I often have to wait for them to figure out that there will be an unpleasant outcome if they don't move aside.
It's currently a popular thing in the USA to purchase vehicles from Japan that are over 25 years of age. They lack current safety equipment, but federal laws allow such vehicles into the country if they're over 25. Of course these also have the steering wheels on the right. Most are the extremely small trucks, but a few years ago I saw a regular-sized sedan on a freeway in front of me and was initially puzzled and a little worried that there didn't seem to be driver! Of course he was just sitting on the other side.
I thought the most interesting part is in the photo of the cars actually doing the change. For some reason there is an American Checker Cab (produced in Kalamazoo Michigan) in the mix.
There actually were a surprising number of American cars in Sweden, and a surprising number of old American cars still exist there. You can watch TH-cam videos of old car rallies there.
I have actually read about this. I'm originally from the midwestern United States, and I am of Scandinavian descent, although less than my swedish-born great-grandmother would make you think, I'm actually a little surprised how little Swedish I am. Anyway, because my Heritage is an interest of mine, not just a Swedish , I remember when I was in elementary school, I read a book about Sweden, and it actually mentioned this. It is something that I do find interesting. he told me something I had known since the fourth grade, but not everyone else did, and I'm glad y'all made a video about it.
In the US Virgin Islands we dive on the left. A hold over from the days of Danish ownership. Fun fact most of our cars come from the USA. Left side drive on the left side of the road. So you passengers get out into traffic.
in america we sometimes drive on the right side of the road and sometimes on the left side, depending on how we feel at the moment and whether or not the cops are after us and how much moonshine is on the trunk.
i know your pissed off because your pet raccoon knocked over your meth lab and set your moms trailer on fire, but really, dont take your anger out on me. @JcJ *
Oh Yeah Yeah That Filthy Rag represents the Evil of owning human beings. And it represents Traitors to our great nation. If that’s your culture then you are a Lousy excuse for an American.
In America, we needed our right hand free to speed shift. In the 1960's whether you had three on the tree or four on the floor, the game was to get from first to second. gear as fast as you could.
@paula I used to think that we did it to take the piss out of the Brits but I looked it up once and there was actually a less colorful reason and it wasn't as interesting so I forgot it.
Lol I'm Swedish and I honestly didn't think he was trying to say anything in Swedish before 0:10, when I understood. It just sounded like gibberish the way he pronounced it.
Every year in Australia a few overseas tourists single handedly try to convince us that we should be driving on the right. Do date, several trucks have provided convincing counter arguments.
I just moved from a right side driving country to a left side driving country with my car, which of course has the steering wheel on the left. It can get realy annoying. When I have to push a button that you are supposed to push through your car window (like when entering a parking site), I always have to get out of my car.
Canada did not fully switch to driving on the right until the 1920s. The province of British Columbia was the last to change; before that, both right and left were happening, in different parts of the country.
I grew up in the Eighties. When I was about five years old, we moved to a new house, where I found an enormous sticker on the inside of my wardrove door. It had a picture of a traffic light and the text: "67 09 03". As a kid, I was completely fashinated by it.
Another BONUS FACT (my favorite) is, that during the discussion preceding the change a swedish comedian suggested, that they could try right side driving only for trucks in the first year. Which some Swedes actually thought to be a good Scandinavian compromise, for about 2 1/2 seconds.
East Timor is in fact a different country from West Timor, which belongs to Indonesia. So a left/right hand drive difference is not as weird as Simon makes it out to be. In practice, of course, Timorese typically drive on the left, right, middle, and underside of the road.
I remember being told that when us Norwegians went over to Sweden, we had to change over to the left side of the road in a weird intersection. So fun to see a video on this :D
My experience driving traffic circles is the left is much more efficient and safe. The city I live in has driving on the right and at intersections the car on the right has the right of way. When entering a traffic circle the car on the left has the right of way. When left side driving into a traffic circle the car on the right has the right of way. Because we always look right the left hand circle is the same but driving on the right you have to look left, something we are not used to and thus problems happen.
This raises the question? When they changed the side of road you drive on why did they not change the direction for guy that has the right of way. Please comment if you know why.
Many keep-left countries are islands with lower speed limits and simpler traffic patterns. Many such as Australia (the island-continent?) and the UK have traffic circles which make for smoother traffic flow and fewer collisions (so I've read).
My left eye is dominant even though I'm right handed and footed. I hate it because I'm also very light and I'm often blinded by incoming traffic on the back roads at night. I pretty much have to hit the brakes whenever passing an oncoming car at night. I had mixed dominance issues as a kid, was forced to always use my right hand even though using my left felt more comfortable for some things. This caused some issues and I had issues seeing directly in front of me. I apparently almost used my peripheral vision. It was only caught because my brother had developmental issues and a vision therapist saw me reading. I had my head tilted to one side and when I got so far across the page id flip it the other way to finish. They were shocked I had learned to read at all much less at age 4. I had to go to a couple years of vision therapy and for whatever reason my body finally settled on left eye, right have, right foot.
The state did the same, they used to drive on the left with left hand drive cars, when they made the switch accidents halved overnight. i cant imagine driving on the right with our right hand drive cars, it would be s dangerous, i can see why the switch for left hand drive cars to the right side of the road was so important
I'm lefthanded but live in Australia and the like the UK we drive on the left with the vast majority of vehicles being right hand drive. As a lefthander, I have no issues driving my manual (stickshift US) car and steering with my less dominant right hand and changing gears with my left hand. Vice versa I have driven in the Netherlands in a left hand drive manual and have no issues apart from remembering to keep right.
The 1950's Swedish film "Wild Strawberries" has an important scene where a car with left-hand drive tried to pass on a 2-lane road road with left-hand traffic. Seems to be almost impossible without a passenger.
One place where America has the steering wheel on right hand side is the U S Postal Service. Their Blue and White delivery Jeeps that allow for opening and shutting curbside Mail Boxes without having the driver to leave his seat. City streets only seeing as they have a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour. (25 Miles per hour)
I spent 31 years driving for the U.S. Postal service with right hand drive delivery vehicles (Retired 2011). USA Drives on the right. It took some getting used to but then seemed normal.
Not true that all American vehicles have left-side steering wheels. Postal delivery vehicles have right-side steering wheels, and it's perfectly legal for anyone to drive a foreign-made car with the same. When my cousin-in-law got a job as a rural postal carrier (use-your-own-vehicle), he managed to find and buy a car with TWO steering wheels and pedal sets.
East Timor started off as a LHD country then changed with Portugal in 1928 then reverted back in 1976 due to Indonesian occupation. They still drive on the left .
The one on the right was on the left The one in the middle was on the right The one on the left was in the middle And the guy in the rear ... was a Methodist. ---Jack Clement
That map blew my mind. I thought we were weird driving on the right side of the road. I assumed it was as uncommon as us using the imperial system of measurement.
Locally they began switching away from four way stops, to roundabouts. This created a fair amount of confusion. Switching from one side of the road to the other would be a bloodbath.
Can you make a video about Amazon's computer servers? Specifically how powerful Amazon's computer servers are? I've heard they can't be ddos'd because they basically get ddos'd every black Friday / cyber Monday. Edit: I guess my question is "can Amazon really not be ddos'd?"
Theoretically you can make any server DDoS proof. You just make it so the only IP that can connect to the server are trusted ip. Or limit how many times a single ip can connect (that would only stop certain kinds of attacks) or track ip's part of known botnets (also has limited range) or more. But if we're just talking about raw server stability/bandwidth, any server can be shut down by a DDoS. But also, Amazon almost certainly reinforces their server infrastructure before black friday and other big holidays.
I think you have hit an artifact of the data on that study. The real reason countries driving on the left have fewer accidents than those driving on the right, is because you were only looking at Europe and were comparing Franch and British driving cultures ;)
I’m right eye dominate, but left handed, I was ambidextrous but broke my right arm when I was younger and they casted it for 12 weeks, so I stopped using it.
But what I don't get: visiting London and standing still on the left side of an escalator, people who are in a hurry and want to pass get annoyed. For some strange reason: when driving on the roads, you overtake on the right. But as a pedestrian, it's the other way around. Saw later that they even have signs everywhere telling you to stand on the right side, as apparently this doesn't only confuse me. Not very logical.
When My grandmother was giving birth to my father, she went to the hospital when swedes were driving on the left. After my father was born and they were driving home, they were driving on the right.
@Oh YeAH yEAh mamacitá
What are you ranting about? Why are you spamming the comment section?
That's cool :)
Okay
Ambrose Burnside I mean, that happens a lot on express lanes where they use gates to turn on and off entrances from the highway. Have you not seen this?
@@jamesbizs I think you might be missing the point
In a joke swedish authorities were planning this change from left to right to be done in two stages: in first stage only the heavy vehicles change lane and all others couple days later.
One interesting thing is that you can still notice some "artifacts" from that era when driving around Sweden today, especially on older motorways. When you come across an intersection where the entry ramps are way too short and the exit ramps are nice and long, that's because it used to be the other way around.
My grandfather told us a story about how my great grand mother was apparently very worried about how this whole switch thingy would go. My grandfather's brother joked and said "oh don't worry mom, the switch is only for trucks for the first week so we can get used to it before switching cars". Apparently it took my great grandmother a while to realize he was joking and was successfully calmed for a few minutes, before everyone burst our laughing xD
Funny how 50 other people also have the same grandmother with the same story? You sir are a troll
Dagen Högertrafik translates to "The day Right traffic". It's actually called "Högertrafikomläggningen" (yeah we hate spaces that is actually 3 words in one) which translates to "The right traffic change" #TodayYouFoundOut
As an American, I have very little opportunity to interact with people from other countries like you folks in Europe do. Thank you for sharing that tiny bit about the world you live in, and thank you for doing so in brilliantly perfect English.
Compound words are fun! Consider this little set of words: ekipage, garage, komage. rotmos, potatismos, plåttermos. :) Of course we have far worse traps for foreigners, like anden vs anden or tomten vs tomten. One I noticed at some point is how our grammar can produce fancy strings of consonants: västkustskt strandlandskap does indeed have 8 distinct consontants in a row. They're all pronounced without any vowels.
Interestingly, as a german speaker, i might have mistaken the word „höger“ with german höher which means „upper“ or rather „more up“. Whats also curious is how i didn‘t struggle to read the large compound word since we do the same with our words.
@@InschrifterOfficial Not far off, higher is högre in swedish. And högar is heaps or piles (singular hög, which also means high).
@@InschrifterOfficial Yeah, German compound words even became a meme. "This is a flugzugabwehrkanone. It kanones flugzugabwehr."
Swedish has a few other quirks that tend to make it difficult for foreigners to learn, including having two object neuter terms, which also affect conjugation, and many words with very different meanings that are spelled, or pronounced the same, or both, as noted by LoneTech, "anden" can mean "the spirit" or "the duck"(pronounced and spelled identically), "tomten" can mean "santa claus" or "the lot/plot (of land)"(identical spelling but not pronounciation). The worst is probably the two neuters though, roughly aproximated in english as "it" or "that", and resulting in different "the" equivalent conjugated endings of words, it even affects the number one, which can be said two ways (think "a" or "an", except it's more like "one" or "a"), one umbrella = ett paraply; the umbrella = paraplyet; one car = en bil; the car = bilen. The rules for telling which one to use for which object are arcane at best, you basically have to learn the correct use for each word individually until you know enough Swedish that you can intuit the rest, what sounds right.
Bonus fact: Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad, eventually a member of ABBA, made her national debut on TV that evening having won a "New Faces" style competition organised by EMI Sweden. The first prize was a recording contract and a second, a surprise for the winning contestant, was being featured singing live on the TV talk show "Hylands hörna" - the audience for the programme being massive that evening as people stayed off the roads in
order to avoid the potential chaos on the roads.
Random ABBA bonus facts should definitely be a 'thing'.
haha, came here to comment this
@ It is in fact entirely true and not a factoid at all.
I admire your brave attempt to pronounce the swedish words. Keep up the good work please. I love this channel.
Brave, but ultimately not very successful. Our set of vowels baffles again...
I diden't even understand he was trying to speak swedish at first...
His mistake was not singing the words out
The day my grandfather stopped driving . born 1905 he said ,, I am getting old and it was a good day to quit :) and took the train the few years left to retirement
Okinawa, Japan went the other way. Switching from driving-on-right to driving-on-left on the weekend of September 9 - 10 1978.
Mom was actually part of the work groups doing this, quite lots of students assisted on the actual day and she was one of them.
Nice video! Bonus tip: ö as in höger should be pronounced more like i in bird or u in fur, not o as in border.
Ye
This always cracks me up: My father was the first one to get hit by a car. He's 80 in a couple of weeks and had been out partying. Looked the wrong way and ended up getting "bumbed" a bit by a car. No injuries and no damage to the car (they where still built like tanks back then) but he got mentioned in the news paper. My mother liked to remind him of it and well... He's not quite so fond of remembering it.
My dad went through driving school before the change - but, because of work, he was unable to take the test until the week after... No ideal preparations, but he passed. On the other hand, my mom who´ve had her license for ages had more trouble adapting even though she was more experienced.
When studying for my driver's license, I learned that there was a significant drop in accidents/kilometer driven for some time after högertrafikomläggningen. Many people revised their driving theory, some drove slower and more careful than normal, and quite a few old people decided to stop driving earlier than they otherwise would have. And of course, they took the opportunity to sneak in a couple of security measures, like removing the free choice of speed limit on countryside roads.
Living in the UK for several years I did notice that the keep-right idea seemed to be a more universal and natural human response. Somewhat in driving, but totally in walking on the sidewalks and climbing stairs. UK pedestrians invariably migrated to the right side of the sidewalk, and the same on stair cases. Buildings in my city had signs on every floor landing reminding people that they were Brits, and needed to move over to the left. Only about half did. It was as if they were subsconsciously pulled to the right - suggesting an atavistic convenience of the right-hand side.
I don't know where you lived but we pass on the left in Britain whilst walking and stairs in public places are marked "keep left". Your comment is inaccurate and invalid.
@@colinp2238 If you reread with a little more care what I wrote, you will notice that I said exactly what you went ahead and repeated as if it were news. Signs in UK stairways remind people, ascending and descending, to move over to the left. They wouldn't need to do that except that most people automatically drift over to the right. Why? Dunno - except that it is an observable occurrence (and thus the need for the signs everywhere).
My point was that despite the UK's left-hand driving habit, the human tendency, at least of those right-handed folks, is to travel on the RIGHT. Sidewalks are another place where about 60% of native British pedestrians walk on the right - makes for quite a tangle of folks!
People naturally form three 'lanes' in pedestrian traffic: a middle lane and two outer lanes going the opposite direction. Ants also do this. For one direction, half of people will migrate away from the middle (half will go right and half will go left) and for the other direction, people will stick to the middle (not as far to the left as they 'should' be).
Two-thirds of people will be walking right of the leftmost 'lane' and two-thirds of people will be walking left of the rightmost 'lane'.
I've never had any issues changing sides when I visit places like England and Australia except that I have to think very carefully what lane to turn in to at intersections.
When I asked a Melbourne taxi driver about hook turns on the way in to town from Tullamarine he laughed, then told me the best way to figure them out was to watch others do it.
But you know they are Victorians afterall
I never had any driving problems when switching but often activated the wipers when meaning to signal lol.
Simon "Whistleblower" Love your content, most always providing an entertaining format and great bonus facts!
It's because cars in Sweden were left-hand-drive that caused the problem. Britain's cars are right-hand-drive.
In my last trip to the UK, we visited the Lake District for a week. Some of the roads up there are just barely large enough for a *single* vehicle, so it makes it even more interesting when you encounter another vehicle. There are periodically places where you can pull slightly off to the side of the road and the rule seems to be that the first person to encounter such a place is the person to pull off to let the other one pass. Apparently, the roads are so narrow that they wouldn't even send the Google Maps vehicle along them to take StreetView images of them. Fun driving them though since they all have hedges along them and you often can't see around the curves. I don't remember seeing any speed limit signs, but I'm pretty sure the speed limit was a lot less than the speed I was driving. :)
"dagan haager"
... oh no... noooo nooo no.
Why do you do this...?
It's the only way to make Swedish sound remotely like an actual language ;)
@@roguebanshee Because a real language isn't an actual language? Your logic is blowing my mind.
@@roguebanshee Swedish has actually many similarities to English. Swedish is way closer to English then say German or Russian
@OmegaReviews Yes that's true. Old Swedish borrows a ton from German, but newer Swedish takes a lot from English too
@OmegaReviews How about Icelandic?
Traffic side trivia: In Stockholm, at the intersection of Valhallavägen and Engelbrektsgatan, Engelbrektsgatan still has left side traffic (optimizing it for U-turns on Valhallavägen). This is obscured a bit by renaming a chunk of it and having all pieces marked as distinct one way streets.
Rip insurance companies
RIP Justin Y
*I sEe YoU eVErywHeRe*
@ Justin Y-
You pretty much watch the some of the same things I do. Pretty cool
You son of a b...
Ireland are also changing over but their going to spread the change. Cars are changing this weekend and lorries next weekend.
o.o
You had me for a minute 😂😂
You are a month early...
That way you'll have less cars to deal with...in the end.
HAHA! "Up for an interesting week!!!"
Your attempt at swedish is kind of adorable
And by "adorable", you surely mean "horrendous".
Visst är det
ja visst
My taxi driver near Varanasi India drove in the middle of the road and only pulled left when another car was oncoming. When I asked why he did this he said 'so the other cars can see me coming'
That guy is fucking stupid wtf
More like so he doesnt run over people while he has a fare.
If it’s a narrow road it’s completely normal
To reduce your chances of another vehicle hitting you, try driving down sidewalks.
in Vietnam the sidewalks are used with scooters and pedestrians. Its literally safer to walk in the street.
The Belgian department of transport has announced that right-hand driving will switch to left-hand driving on the 1st of April 2019. If everything goes well, trucks will also drive on the left side of the roads the week after ; )
Oh no, that's only Wallonia. And as a compromise, in Brussels everyone will drive in the middle. And during any future year plus periods without a government, only driving in reverse will be permitted.
@@Ruthlesscritic Have you heard about the roundabouts? Clockwise on even days and anti-clockwise on odd days expect in towns near the sea (for obvious security reasons).
There’s countries that drive on the same side as where their steering wheel is.
For ex: Burma and Afghanistan have RHD cars but they drive in the right instead of left.
I doubt that’s safe
In Malta, they drive on the "shady" side of the road. Whether it is a dual carriageway or not, it's of no importance.
In Cairo, the morning greeting is "Good Morning. Has your car been kissed today". Crossing Desert areas at night is also a heart stopping experience. If there is oncoming traffic approaching, both parties switch off their lights (not just go to low beam) completely, leaving both in courteous, if somewhat frightening, total blackness for a few critical seconds. That plus the myriad wild camels that don't recognise road markings and don't come with reflective jackets.
Nice, reminds me of how the southern US changed its railroad gauge in less than 48hrs in the late 19th century. Another great story you could cover .... hell, you probably already have!
How traffic turned into a battle royale in one day
lol!
Awesome video ! thanks for a fun Sweden video hejja sverige !!
I like to drive a manual gearbox car, it’s what my left hand is for, right hand on the steering wheel, this works nicely on the left hand side of the road. I drive in France, Belgium and Holland and have no problem when over there
Because you're used to it. For the rest of us it feels just as fine to have left hand on steering wheel and gearing with the right. I've also driven right hand side cars, and barring a bit of fumbling in the beginning, it works just as fine. Neither is better than the other
Most Mail personal transportation vehicles have the steering wheel of the vehicle on the right side, to help drop off the mail.
Interesting; i noticed such a van whilst in North Dakota few years ago, and the driver gave this correct explanation. Similarly in the UK there are LHD vehicles that sweep the gutters of roads.
Why not just drive in the middle?
finally someone with a brain
@theone Andonly What about the overtaker that is coming at you in that lane?
@Oh YeAH yEAh mamacitá just install 2 periscopes on the car, easy
There's a lot of country highways that have a single passing lane. Some switch between sides and others (depending on the state) can be used by both directions at any time. Definitely do not use in poor visibility.
Where I live, a lot of people seem to do that already.
I often have to wait for them to figure out that there will be an unpleasant outcome if they don't move aside.
Great video!
As a Swede, hearing you try and pronounce "Håll dig till höger, Svensson" was hilarious 🤣
It's currently a popular thing in the USA to purchase vehicles from Japan that are over 25 years of age. They lack current safety equipment, but federal laws allow such vehicles into the country if they're over 25. Of course these also have the steering wheels on the right. Most are the extremely small trucks, but a few years ago I saw a regular-sized sedan on a freeway in front of me and was initially puzzled and a little worried that there didn't seem to be driver! Of course he was just sitting on the other side.
I don't know what that intersection is in that clip at the end of the video, but it's giving me some serious driver's anxiety!
I thought the most interesting part is in the photo of the cars actually doing the change. For some reason there is an American Checker Cab (produced in Kalamazoo Michigan) in the mix.
There actually were a surprising number of American cars in Sweden, and a surprising number of old American cars still exist there. You can watch TH-cam videos of old car rallies there.
I have actually read about this. I'm originally from the midwestern United States, and I am of Scandinavian descent, although less than my swedish-born great-grandmother would make you think, I'm actually a little surprised how little Swedish I am. Anyway, because my Heritage is an interest of mine, not just a Swedish , I remember when I was in elementary school, I read a book about Sweden, and it actually mentioned this. It is something that I do find interesting. he told me something I had known since the fourth grade, but not everyone else did, and I'm glad y'all made a video about it.
I'm usually not big fan of the, "top 5, 10, 29, 100," lists on TH-cam but I really like Simon Whistler and the topics on this channel.
In the US Virgin Islands we dive on the left. A hold over from the days of Danish ownership. Fun fact most of our cars come from the USA. Left side drive on the left side of the road. So you passengers get out into traffic.
That last graphic of the traffic jam got my blood pressure sky high.
26. maí 1968 was H-day here in Iceland (it was from 06:00 o´clock). Alþingi made this decision on 13. maí 1964.
All hail the All Thing!
I can still remember seeing it on the news, in Holland
in america we sometimes drive on the right side of the road and sometimes on the left side, depending on how we feel at the moment and whether or not the cops are after us and how much moonshine is on the trunk.
@Oh Yeah Yeah CNN says that flag is racist so it is racist
@@justjess-zl3pm Daily reminder that the confederate flag is not racist
dont drag your relatives in to this discussion @JcJ *
i know your pissed off because your pet raccoon knocked over your meth lab and set your moms trailer on fire, but really, dont take your anger out on me. @JcJ *
Oh Yeah Yeah
That Filthy Rag represents the Evil of owning human beings.
And it represents Traitors to our great nation.
If that’s your culture then you are a Lousy excuse for an American.
Think you did pretty good with the pronunciation!
Good video
That video of cars going around and between each other made me so anxious. Holy hell
That's what happens when idiots jam up an intersection.
In America, we needed our right hand free to speed shift. In the 1960's whether you had three on the tree or four on the floor, the game was to get from first to second. gear as fast as you could.
@paula I used to think that we did it to take the piss out of the Brits but I looked it up once and there was actually a less colorful reason and it wasn't as interesting so I forgot it.
Lol I'm Swedish and I honestly didn't think he was trying to say anything in Swedish before 0:10, when I understood. It just sounded like gibberish the way he pronounced it.
We get it.
Every year in Australia a few overseas tourists single handedly try to convince us that we should be driving on the right. Do date, several trucks have provided convincing counter arguments.
I'm American and i drive on the left.
Because i live in Japan. :)
Who else would be proud of discovering the pragmatism of honoring local customs? ;)
I'm American and I drive on the left too. So do all of us. We sit on the left side of our vehicles, where the steering wheels are located.
This documentary does not mention that four towns/cites were, years before, set aside where people could practice driving on the opposite side.
I just moved from a right side driving country to a left side driving country with my car, which of course has the steering wheel on the left. It can get realy annoying. When I have to push a button that you are supposed to push through your car window (like when entering a parking site), I always have to get out of my car.
Canada use to drive on the left.
Canada did not fully switch to driving on the right until the 1920s. The province of British Columbia was the last to change; before that, both right and left were happening, in different parts of the country.
In a free society each driver should be able to choose for themselves with side is the best for them.
I grew up in the Eighties. When I was about five years old, we moved to a new house, where I found an enormous sticker on the inside of my wardrove door. It had a picture of a traffic light and the text: "67 09 03". As a kid, I was completely fashinated by it.
Another BONUS FACT (my favorite) is, that during the discussion preceding the change a swedish comedian suggested, that they could try right side driving only for trucks in the first year. Which some Swedes actually thought to be a good Scandinavian compromise, for about 2 1/2 seconds.
East Timor is in fact a different country from West Timor, which belongs to Indonesia. So a left/right hand drive difference is not as weird as Simon makes it out to be. In practice, of course, Timorese typically drive on the left, right, middle, and underside of the road.
Wow! This is so cool!!
Im sorry but is this a reupload ? It feels like one
I remember watching the same topic on one of your channel
I agree. It must be a reupload to remove the sponsor. I watched the original post too.
So I’m not crazy. I had to look at the video info because normally uploaders TELL their watchers instead of pretending it’s a new video
When my mom was a kid she went out to take a picture of the big day. The streets were empty. She took a pic of an empty street.
"You can check out our video on why some countries drive on the left"
British Empire : Am I a joke to you
I remember this. It was crazy!
In Australia we still haven't changed to driving on the right, even in 2020.
Another bonus fact: Mclaren had the laws in Britain changed to allow them to put the driver in the middle of the mclaren f1
I remember being told that when us Norwegians went over to Sweden, we had to change over to the left side of the road in a weird intersection. So fun to see a video on this :D
Me too, but I don't think I've ever seen a picture that wasn't in this video.. Maybe we could Google ^_^, @@pixiepandaplush
July 30, 1978, the day Okinawa changed from right to left.
My experience driving traffic circles is the left is much more efficient and safe. The city I live in has driving on the right and at intersections the car on the right has the right of way. When entering a traffic circle the car on the left has the right of way. When left side driving into a traffic circle the car on the right has the right of way. Because we always look right the left hand circle is the same but driving on the right you have to look left, something we are not used to and thus problems happen.
This raises the question? When they changed the side of road you drive on why did they not change the direction for guy that has the right of way. Please comment if you know why.
Hell, this looks like a normal day on our highways in my state🤣🤣
Many keep-left countries are islands with lower speed limits and simpler traffic patterns. Many such as Australia (the island-continent?) and the UK have traffic circles which make for smoother traffic flow and fewer collisions (so I've read).
My left eye is dominant even though I'm right handed and footed. I hate it because I'm also very light and I'm often blinded by incoming traffic on the back roads at night. I pretty much have to hit the brakes whenever passing an oncoming car at night.
I had mixed dominance issues as a kid, was forced to always use my right hand even though using my left felt more comfortable for some things. This caused some issues and I had issues seeing directly in front of me. I apparently almost used my peripheral vision. It was only caught because my brother had developmental issues and a vision therapist saw me reading. I had my head tilted to one side and when I got so far across the page id flip it the other way to finish. They were shocked I had learned to read at all much less at age 4. I had to go to a couple years of vision therapy and for whatever reason my body finally settled on left eye, right have, right foot.
The state did the same, they used to drive on the left with left hand drive cars, when they made the switch accidents halved overnight.
i cant imagine driving on the right with our right hand drive cars, it would be s dangerous, i can see why the switch for left hand drive cars to the right side of the road was so important
0:34 that figure is inaccurate, Nepal also drive on the left but is excluded in that figure.
I was fairly captivated by the traffic scene unfolding towards the end of the video.
I'm lefthanded but live in Australia and the like the UK we drive on the left with the vast majority of vehicles being right hand drive. As a lefthander, I have no issues driving my manual (stickshift US) car and steering with my less dominant right hand and changing gears with my left hand. Vice versa I have driven in the Netherlands in a left hand drive manual and have no issues apart from remembering to keep right.
My country used to drive on left but they switched to right because 75% cars were imported from europe and america
It was under British rule but it changed anyways
The 1950's Swedish film "Wild Strawberries" has an important scene where a car with left-hand drive tried to pass on a 2-lane road road with left-hand traffic. Seems to be almost impossible without a passenger.
One place where America has the steering wheel on right hand side is the U S Postal Service. Their Blue and White delivery Jeeps that allow for opening and shutting curbside Mail Boxes without having the driver to leave his seat. City streets only seeing as they have a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour. (25 Miles per hour)
I spent 31 years driving for the U.S. Postal service with right hand drive delivery vehicles (Retired 2011). USA Drives on the right. It took some getting used to but then seemed normal.
Wow! That was an amazing feat. Can we have an video about the Canada switch also?
No, because that occurred before motion pictures were invented.
Not true that all American vehicles have left-side steering wheels. Postal delivery vehicles have right-side steering wheels, and it's perfectly legal for anyone to drive a foreign-made car with the same. When my cousin-in-law got a job as a rural postal carrier (use-your-own-vehicle), he managed to find and buy a car with TWO steering wheels and pedal sets.
But those are rare exceptions to the norm, not in common use by the general public.
@@spacemissing um duh.
Idea for a subject:
Studies that were the biggest waste of money
O the irony if it was studies about what study cost the most.......
East Timor started off as a LHD country then changed with Portugal in 1928 then reverted back in 1976 due to Indonesian occupation. They still drive on the left .
When the overhead costs to change is a factor to not do as others do.
You already did this!!
Maybe he just loves Sweden.
The one on the right was on the left
The one in the middle was on the right
The one on the left was in the middle
And the guy in the rear ... was a Methodist.
---Jack Clement
That map blew my mind. I thought we were weird driving on the right side of the road. I assumed it was as uncommon as us using the imperial system of measurement.
Locally they began switching away from four way stops, to roundabouts. This created a fair amount of confusion. Switching from one side of the road to the other would be a bloodbath.
The intro STILL makes me think I'm launching RuneScape...
Can you make a video about Amazon's computer servers? Specifically how powerful Amazon's computer servers are? I've heard they can't be ddos'd because they basically get ddos'd every black Friday / cyber Monday.
Edit: I guess my question is "can Amazon really not be ddos'd?"
Theoretically you can make any server DDoS proof. You just make it so the only IP that can connect to the server are trusted ip. Or limit how many times a single ip can connect (that would only stop certain kinds of attacks) or track ip's part of known botnets (also has limited range) or more.
But if we're just talking about raw server stability/bandwidth, any server can be shut down by a DDoS.
But also, Amazon almost certainly reinforces their server infrastructure before black friday and other big holidays.
I think you have hit an artifact of the data on that study. The real reason countries driving on the left have fewer accidents than those driving on the right, is because you were only looking at Europe and were comparing Franch and British driving cultures ;)
Franch. Yes. Not French, Franch.
@@Alan.24 Franch and Bretish.
Can't forget the Amuricanish
@@Alan.24 Right. And what about Spinash, Gurman, and Greckian?
and also itelain. Dont forget itelain.
That pronunciation though xD like it
And yet here in the states I have a roundabout near my house we got years back and people still don't know how to use it 🙄
"Mr Lamm and Hamilton Jones! Ill have your heads on the prime ministers plate today you donkeys!" (Men from the ministry)
I’m right eye dominate, but left handed, I was ambidextrous but broke my right arm when I was younger and they casted it for 12 weeks, so I stopped using it.
But what I don't get: visiting London and standing still on the left side of an escalator, people who are in a hurry and want to pass get annoyed. For some strange reason: when driving on the roads, you overtake on the right. But as a pedestrian, it's the other way around. Saw later that they even have signs everywhere telling you to stand on the right side, as apparently this doesn't only confuse me. Not very logical.
I prefer "häagen-dazs", myself.
Pfft. Thats nothing.
Check out 'The Day They Changed The Gauge' on The History Guy.
Almost all of american rail road changed size overnight.
That was a great video!
For not being swedish, your pronunciation of riksdag is quite good. Except your r-sound, the rest is actually good