99% Invisible - 215- H-Day

Episode Date: June 8, 2016

September 3rd, 1967, also known as H-Day, is etched in the collective memory of Sweden. That morning, millions of Swedes switched from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right. The changeover was an unprecedented … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 2016, the Swedish Tourist Association announced a new service called the Swedish number. If you dial the telephone number plus 4-6-771-793-336, you will be connected with a random suite. You will soon be connected to a random suite somewhere in Sweden. Hello. Hello, big Ula. Hello. Hello and welcome to Sweden. Oh hi, is this a random Swedish person?

Yeah, this is Swedish person. Okay. Cold calling the suite is Will Kohli. I'm a reporter and I have one question for you. What do you think of when I tell you the date 3rd of September 1967? 1967, 1967, September 3rd. It could maybe be. The left to right, that's the one we changed to right and perfect.

We called about a dozen Swedes, and for the most part, if they are alive and in country for any part of the 1960s. The date September 3rd 1967 was a hugely important and heralded day. Doggenho. Doggenho. H.D. Yeah, H.D. Yeah. Short for Huga Trafik Om Langningen or something like that. I think. Sorry. No, I'll get traffic on the beginning again. Meaning the right-hand traffic diversion. H.D. was the day that 7.8 million Swedes switched the side of the road they drive on, from the left side to the right.

It would be the most massive overhaul in driving infrastructure that any country had ever seen. Historically, if you're riding a horse, generally you want to keep to the left so that you can use your right hand to greet passers-by, or, you know, whack them with a sword. But with the advent of the horse-drawn carriage, there were some conditions in which it made sense to stick to the right, and customs could vary by country. And as cars became more common, they followed the same laws that were established for horse-drawn traffic. Up until 1967, Sweden drove on the left side of the road.

Which, set it apart from its neighboring countries, Finland, Norway, and Denmark, all of which drove on the right. And this presented problems. The biggest problem was the accidents with Swedish drivers abroad. And the visitors in Sweden who also had difficulties with a change from right and driving to left and driving. And these accidents increased continuously.

This is psychologist Anders England. When he says left hand driving, he means driving on the left hand side of the road. When Anders started working with the Swedish government in the 1960s, they were tired of seeing Swedes getting into car accidents abroad and having tourists and truck drivers from other countries getting into car accidents in Sweden. There was also some motor vehicles were adapted to right hand driving. Swedish car companies made vehicles that were meant to be driven on the right, so they could be exported more easily.

But these cars also found their way onto roads in Sweden. And that was a problem. Namely having your steering wheel on the outside edge of the road. Overtaking or passing as you say in your country, you don't see the incoming cars. It was a big mess. The Swedish government thought it could get a lot better if they just switched what side of the road they drove on if they could drive on the right, like most of Europe.

Legislative action to switch driving side had been attempted before, few times actually, but it always failed. And then, in the early 1960s, the Swedish government thought that this could be the time. They put it to a public vote, asking the Swedish populist to decide. The answer from the people was a resounding no. 83% of the people in Sweden voted for keeping left hand driving. So the government just went ahead and did it anyway.

Sweden likes to be looked upon as a democratic country and despite that the government decided that we must change this. Anders England served as part of the team that would help make that change. I was secretary in the scientific working group. As secretary, Anders supervised three teams. One assessing what methods they should deploy for an educational campaign. One trying to forecast what problems they might encounter, and the third one for mass media.

One of Anders' jobs is helping to come up with informational materials for the switch, like a pamphlet that would explain what would be different, what to watch out for, and what rules to follow. And just take a second to think about what kind of a job this is. If you've ever been in a car driving on the opposite side of what you're used to, everything feels wrong. So you need to teach people to identify what is actually correct even though it feels wrong,

and what's actually just wrong, wrong. The pamphlet Anders and his team worked on shows where your car goes when you make a right turn or a left turn, how to pass, what pedestrians should be aware of. How they said move. How they said drive. The two most important things that the pamphlet did was, one, to familiarize Sweden with a new traffic sign.

The six formed sign with a leaning H in the middle. A hexagon sign with an H in it. H for hugger or right. These signs would be visible on the roads after the switch, and there were also little stickers with an H you could put on the inside of your windshield to remind yourself while you're driving. In fact, you might still spot an H sticker

inside some of the older cars in Sweden. The second super important part of the public education campaign was the date of the switch. September 3rd, 1967. Dog and Ho, H. Day. The pamphlet was a good start in getting people ready for H. Day, but soon the government realized they needed to bring out the big guns. They wanted to unleash their nation's most effective weapon for penetrating

people's hearts and minds. Pop music. Swings Television Station had put out a competition to come up with the best song to teach people about H.D. The winner, the tell stars, with Paul Digg-Dill-Hurg at Spenzen. I hold the deal heard, then Spenzen. I hold the deal heard, then I'm not smooth. Translation, keep to the right, Svensson. Svensson, being a stereotypically common Swedish last name, like Smith or Jones. There's also a bit of wordplay here. In Swedish, keeping to the right is shorthand for being faithful to your spouse. Going left means having an affair.

The government had spent four years getting the country ready. The official HD pamphlet had gone out to every sweet. Det är en färg. Det är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det här är en av det and it was big don't you? September had arrived. The evening of the second became the morning of the third. Everyone knew the drill. Each day was here. All non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from late night to early morning. Most cars were kept off the road. The only people in the roadways were construction crews,

taxi drivers who were given the OK from the government. And a hand-picked few, like this guy. It was great fun. There were very few cars out in Stockholm. And I had one of the very few got a permission to drive at night when it was forbidden. This is Bow Home Strong. Well, I'm Bow Home Strong. I'm a Swedish journalist.

I've been working since 1960 in the television as a television reporter. In 1967 I was working on the switch to a right hand drive traffic and doing a lot of stories about it. Boah is actually a pretty famous broadcast journalist, kind of like a Swedish Tom Brokaw. At the time this was the big story. Oh yeah, we were on the air almost all night and they have to two transmitting from different points in Sweden. Where crews were out putting up the hexagonal H signs. The ones reminding you to drive on the right, plus they had to flip around and move pretty

much every street sign in the country. When I saw the changing of signs, turning them the other way, and the changing of signs at bus stops. There's such a great feeling to be biking around, 10 years old old and there was no traffic. A few of the random suites that we reached on the phone were also there on each day. And then of course there have a song that was going repeatedly on the radio. I can't record it but try to rewrite when something was something. I hope that you heard that Sven's song.

Roundabouts were reconfigured for people to go counterclockwise and set up clockwise. Freeway off ramps became on ramps. Temporary bus stops were set up in the middle of the street to accommodate buses that now had doors on the wrong side. At 4.50 a.m., a horn blared across Stockholm and a loudspeaker announced, Now is the time to change over. And then, under the direction of thousands of traffic cops dispatched around the country,

all of the cars in Sweden made their way to the right. For the most part, the H.D. transition team had accounted for everything. But it was disorienting, and not everyone was a happy camper. Some people said they got lost. They were in their own city. They had been driving there for years. They were used to take one by street, for example, and there was still one way, but the other way. So they couldn't go where they wanted.

I remember one old lady or middle-aged lady sitting in the passenger seat in one car, we stopped and she was mad, mad as hell, saying, we didn't want this, we voted against it, everybody was against going over, damn politicians, they didn't start a war, but they're gonna get thousands of people killed in the traffic instead. But here's the really amazing thing about H.D. and the shift as a whole. The total number of traffic related deaths on H.D. was zero. In fact, the total number of accidents went down for a while.

There were a lot of people thinking that this should be catastrophe. There should be thousands of dead people in the traffic. It didn't. Likely because everyone was so freaked out about driving on what felt like the wrongs are the road that for a while, everyone drove really slowly and carefully. A year after Sweden switched sides of the road, Iceland also switched to driving on the right to be more like the rest of Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland not understanding. In the 1970s, former British colonies, including Ghana and Nigeria, switched from left to right to be more like their neighbors in West Africa and the rest of the world.

Today, the vast majority of the world drives on the right, and in places that do drive on the left, like in the UK, movements occasionally spring up, trying to get the country to switch to the right. But there is one notable exception, where a country went left. Office of the Prime Minister of Farm War, how may I help you? Samoa. Oh, hi, this is Will Kohli calling from New York. Hello, Mr. Kohli. Samoa is an island republic in the South Pacific, not to be confused with American Samoa, which is just east of Samoa. In 2009, they did the opposite of Sweden and nearly every other country who made

the switch. They went from driving on the right to driving on the left. Will Coley called up the guy responsible for the change? Okay, hold on for a minute. I'll transfer the call. Okay, thank you so much. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, this is the actual whole music, the office of... Hello. Hi, Prime Minister. Yes.

I want the Prime Minister of South Park, who left the South and the Middle East and going. For Prime Minister Malay Le Moi, switching to the left offered one major obvious benefit, aligning Samoa, more closely with the B.A.R.R.R. and the B.A.R.R. for the first time. For Prime Minister Malay Le Moy, switching to the left offered one major obvious benefit, aligning Samoa more closely with the biggest nearby economies, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. All of which drive on the left.

Well, it's saying something that we have been thinking about for a long time, mainly because we needed to import cheaper cars. Samoa wanted to import cheap used cars from nearby Japan. Japan has the cheapest to sit and earn car market in the world. But cars in Japan are made to be driven on the left, so Samoa decided to make the switch to left side driving. It's a real common sense. By all accounts the day of the switch, September 7th 2009 was really smooth.

It probably helped that there were only a couple of major roads to modify. It began with a radio announcement from Prime Minister Malay Lemawi. The great event that would be most helpful to our livelihood and that is to die on the right-hand side of the road. And the switch was that this was perfect. That was great, but you said right hand. I think you meant left hand, right? Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah.

Stick to the rights, Fenson. Prime Minister Malay Lamawi, stick to the left. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Will Coley and Sam Greenspan, with Katie Mingle, Sheree Fuzef, Delaney Hall, Kurt Colesdead, Avery Trouffleman, and me Roman Mars. Special thanks to Peter Kincaid, author of Rules of the Road, also thanks to Diana Kincaid, Yuwan Nicholson, Gustav Algren, Ambassador Fitturi Alessaya, Boris Linkwist, Kate Montague, Rowena Fatouava-Vavatal, and the Swedish Radio Archives.

And thanks to our random suites, Kenneth Johnson, Lucas Nielsen, Hans Bjorkmann, Mona Nortazavi, and Yulah Grunas. We are a project of 91.7K ALW in San Francisco and produce the offices of Arksign, an architecture and interiors firm. In beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook. Follow us all on Twitter and Instagram, but the best way to explore the 99% invisible activity that shapes the design of our world is to click around the hundreds of stories, now both audio stories and print stories on 99pi.org.