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Sweden switches traffic from the left side of the road to the right side on September 3, 1967. Police hit the streets with PA systems, warning drivers not to screw up.
From Universal Newsreel V40 R73 1967-09-08
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
A non-binding referendum on the introduction of right hand traffic was held in Sweden on 16 October 1955.
The voter turnout was 53.2%, and the suggestion failed by 15.5% against 82.9%. However, eight years later, in 1963, the Riksdag approved the change. The traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right on 3 September 1967 (see Dagen H).
The terms right-hand traffic and left-hand traffic refer to regulations requiring all bidirectional traffic, unless otherwise directed, to keep either to the right or the left side of the road, respectively. This is so fundamental to traffic flow that it is sometimes referred to as the rule of the road. This basic rule improves traffic flow and reduces the risk of head-on collisions. Today, about 65% of the world’s population live in countries with right-hand traffic and 35% in countries with left-hand traffic. About 90% of the world’s total road distance carries traffic on the right and 10% on the left…
Terminology
With a few minor exceptions, each country specifies a uniform road traffic flow: left-hand traffic (LHT), in which traffic keeps to the left side of the road, or right-hand traffic (RHT), in which traffic keeps to the right.
The terms nearside (or kerbside) and offside (or off-kerb side) are used in some English-speaking countries to refer to the passenger and driver sides (in modern parlance) of a vehicle: the “nearside” is closest to the kerb (in the designated direction of traffic) and the “offside” is closest to the centre of the road. The preceding terms point up “safe” (nearside) and “unsafe” (offside) portions of vehicles for loading and unloading passengers and cargo.
Vehicles are usually manufactured in left-hand drive (LHD) and right-hand drive (RHD) configurations, referring to the placement of the driving seat and controls within the vehicle. Typically, the placement of the steering wheel is on the offside of the vehicle: LHT countries generally require use of RHD vehicles, and RHT countries generally require use of LHD vehicles. This is to ensure that the driver’s line-of-sight is as long as possible down the road beyond leading vehicles, an important safety consideration during overtaking (passing) manoeuvres.
There are LHT countries where most vehicles are LHD (see Caribbean islands below)—and there are some countries with RHT and mostly RHD vehicles, such as Afghanistan, Burma, and the Russian Far East, in the last case due to import of used vehicles from Japan. Many countries permit both types of vehicles on their roads. Terminological confusion may arise from the terms left-hand drive or right-hand drive to indicate the side of the road along which vehicles are driven.
Note: Whatever a given vehicle’s driver-side configuration (LHD or RHD—this can vary even within one country, e.g. for special postal delivery vehicles), in all cases local laws mandate the position of travel (RHT or LHT), and traffic code penalties for “driving on the wrong side” are often severe (because of the propensity for catastrophic accidents when a driver fails to observe local law)…
