Samoa drives on the other side.....

G Luxel

Samoa is to become the 1st nation since the 1970s to change the side of the road that cars drive on , from Right to Left......just saw it on BBC 24.

ChristyCent

Didnt Australia or somewhere do this and they decided to do it at like 5 pm instead of in at midnight so people wouldnt get up early and groggy and forget.

It must be a really big job wouldnt all the roads and stuff need to be remarked?

high horse

ChristyCent wrote: »

Didnt Australia or somewhere do this and they decided to do it at like 5 pm instead of in at midnight so people wouldnt get up early and groggy and forget.

It must be a really big job wouldnt all the roads and stuff need to be remarked?

If the roads in Samoa are anything like the roads in Fiji then road markings shouldn't be a problem... none there in the first place :pac:

Bluefoam

They closed the pubs for two days, so there would be no drink drivers...

pickarooney

ChristyCent wrote: »

Didnt Australia or somewhere do this and they decided to do it at like 5 pm instead of in at midnight so people wouldnt get up early and groggy and forget.

It must be a really big job wouldnt all the roads and stuff need to be remarked?

Sweden, I think, from left to right.
I don't understand why an island like Samoa (Western or American?) woulld bother changing, particularly in the other direction.

SDTimeout

I seem to remember that one of the Nordic countries changed about twenty + years ago.
SD

Wishbone Ash

pickarooney wrote: »

Sweden, I think, from left to right

SDTimeout wrote: »

I seem to remember that one of the Nordic countries changed about twenty + years ago.
SD

Sweden in 1966 or 1967?

ChristyCent wrote:

It must be a really big job wouldnt all the roads and stuff need to be remarked?

It involves a lot of forward planning for years in advance to ensure people buy appropriate vehicles in advance. Bus companies are probably the biggest losers as their vehicles are practically redundant overnight (entry doors on wrong side). Samoa is probably fairly underdeveloped so they shouldnn't have any motorway intersections to change/replace.

Berty

Dagen H was the day Norway switched over.

It was mainly because all of their cars were right hand drive and there were a lot of crashes.

I thought about this recently but unless Northern Ireland changes with us then we are screwed and have you ever tried to drive a left hand drive car on the right hand side or a right hand drive on the left hand side of the road. Driving around corners is scary because you are blindsided.

Unless we all changed our cars to RHD on the same day as changing lanes then it would never happen.

Best of luck to Samoa because in Norway the old people were too afraid to drive so simply gave up.

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

seamy_orr

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Sweden in 1966 or 1967?

Bus companies are probably the biggest losers as their vehicles are practically redundant overnight (entry doors on wrong side).

Dublin Bus would weather the storm ok though, they could just reverse their buses along each route, while maintaining/improving schedule and accident stats.

Wishbone Ash

seamy_orr wrote: »

Dublin Bus would weather the storm ok though, they could just reverse their buses along each route, while maintaining/improving schedule and accident stats.

.....or keep all bus lanes as they are and label them 'contra-flow'!

The Real B-man

Seems pointless just like the MPH to KPH Here!

Noobsaibot21

pickarooney wrote: »

Sweden, I think, from left to right.
I don't understand why an island like Samoa (Western or American?) woulld bother changing, particularly in the other direction.

All of their big car exporting neighbours (Australia, NZ, Japan, possible HK) are left. Much cheaper to load a boat from there to Oz as opposed to USA.

G Luxel

Im sure that Sweden had left-hand drive cars from Day 1, ie 1900s. If you look at any photos or films before they even announced that they were switching to driving on the right in 1961, all the vehicles were LHD. Its like selling new Corvettes or Dodge Vipers here.

Max_Damage

Read about this in Auto Express today. Apparently their is big protests over it, and people are going to refuse driving on the left. Wouldn't want to be near the roads there when that happens! :eek:

As for why they are doing it, probably because most of the cars in the country are JDM (used Japanese imports) cars. Their was talk of a similar thing to be done in far eastern Russia a few years back (as most cars in the far east are also JDM cars), but nothing came of it.

alastair

G Luxel wrote: »

Samoa is to become the 1st nation since the 1970s to change the side of the road that cars drive on , from Right to Left......just saw it on BBC 24.

Not a nation as such, but Okinawa switched in '78.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/730_(transport)

Wishbone Ash

Stockholm on the morning of the changeover.

bladebrew

border crossing in thailand pic from dublintosydney.com,i cant remember which country this is goin into but they switch lanes at the border,
as mentioned by a poster a few weeks back,i couldnt find a picture anywhere until someone mentioned this site about a week ago,
it must be great fun

coming from laos into thailand

L1011

Berty wrote: »

Unless we all changed our cars to RHD on the same day as changing lanes then it would never happen.

Our cars ARE right hand drive - you sit on the right of the car. LHD is what you drive natively in countries that drive on the right.

G Luxel

http://www.volvoclub.org.uk/history/driving_on_right.shtml

The reason why Lefthand drive cars were sold in a country that was driving on the left.....:)

Edit: since I typed the above, Ive watched BBC New24 and apparently the changeover happened at 6 AM yesterday morning.
The country had 2 days holidays and all signs were changed over, signs were painted on the roads and there has been no accident
but lots of traffic jams. The reason for the change over is to have lots of cheap cars from south-east asia rather than expensive
LHD cars.