[HN Gopher] Hogertrafikomlaggningen
___________________________________________________________________
Hogertrafikomlaggningen
Author : destructuredObj
Score : 155 points
Date : 2024-06-09 08:38 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| mg wrote:
| Maybe the world should standardize on: Driving
| on the right Speaking English The metric system
| The 2024-06-09 date format The Celsius scale The
| 24-hour clock
| SahAssar wrote:
| > Speaking English
|
| If you mean teaching english as a second language, I can agree.
| If you mean switching over to it as the primary language I hard
| disagree.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I am fluent in one language and speak three others passably,
| and have order-a-beer/ask-for-a-toilet/get-directions ability
| in a few others. It does not matter to me which language I
| use to communicate. Why should it? The one I am fluent in is
| not the language of any of my ancestors if I go back just a
| couple of generations. So what?
|
| My children are natively fluent in two languages. Neither of
| their languages is a second language.
|
| Which language should I tell them is their primary language?
| Novosell wrote:
| Are you trying to make a point or..? It's a bit unclear.
| People can have multiple languages they're native in, that
| doesn't mean we should try to replace every language with
| English.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| > that doesn't mean we should try to replace every
| language with English
|
| Where did I say that everyone should speak only English?
| I do not care what language people speak.
|
| > Are you trying to make a point or..?
|
| Why are you being unkind? Or hostile, or whatever this
| is?
|
| I was asking a question. I understand that people think
| they will lose something if they speak a different
| language. My native language is not the same as any of my
| ancestors from just a few generations ago, and I want to
| know what difference it makes?
| Novosell wrote:
| Language and culture go hand in hand. I don't understand
| how you've learnt 1 fluently and 3 passably and are
| deemingly completely missing this aspect to it. So to
| standardize language is to attempt to standardize culture
| which I would imagine we don't wanna do, right?
|
| And it doesn't matter what your ancestors spoke, of
| course. But it does matter what those around you speak,
| now. Neither the person you originally responded to or me
| have mentioned ancestors.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Speaking a different language than your great great great
| grandfather ("a few generations ago") is not always very
| impactful, though even this means you can no longer read
| letters or poetry or novels that they may have written or
| just loved. You can no longer understand laws that they
| might have obeyed, understand speeches that influenced
| them, and so many other things that keep a culture going
| beyond generations.
|
| However, that pales in comparison to what the transition
| means, not speaking the same language as your
| grandparents. You get a huge gulf of distance from
| relatives who, for the majority of humanity, are some of
| their most beloved and close relationships.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Usually people have one primary language which is usually
| the one predominantly used in the home they grew up in (or
| maybe the one used for their primary education).
|
| If you have multiple, that's fine, but your disregarding
| the reality for 90%+ of people if you don't think most
| people have a language that is their "primary".
|
| > It does not matter to me which language I use to
| communicate. Why should it?
|
| For most people language is tied to their culture and
| history. I'm just saying that we should not mandate that
| people use a certain language as their "primary". It would
| be nice if we had a global way to passably communicate
| though.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Yeah, I get what you are saying. I would never want to
| mandate any language. I think it is dumb when countries
| have official languages as opposed to e.g. operating
| languages.
|
| I just think that people are more worried about the
| homogenization of language than they need to be. In fact,
| with how quickly culture is homogenizing around the
| world, I think that it is even possible that language
| differences outlast cultural differences over the medium
| term. Teenagers in a lot of the world I have been to in
| the past years dress/behave/express themselves ... not
| very differently.
|
| Everywhere I go in the world, old shit is different, but
| modern shit is depressingly the same, or really similar
| anyway.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > Everywhere I go in the world, old shit is different,
| but modern shit is depressingly the same, or really
| similar anyway.
|
| That seems like a very reductive take. Of course trends
| and culture is more global since we now communicate
| globally, but there are definitely regional cultures and
| values and those are expressed many different ways.
|
| If I travel from my small european city to a city in the
| american midwest or a city in nigeria that are going to
| be massive differences regardless if the teens are doing
| the same tiktok dance or whatever metric of
| homogenization you pick. But in all of those places I
| almost everyone I will meet can speak english.
| andoando wrote:
| I imagine having offical languages dictates that all the
| state functions have to operate in said official
| languages. If you have a government office for example,
| your website, pamphlets, administered tests etc for
| example have to be printed in the official language.
| Would be a mess if that was not enforced
| bjoli wrote:
| I think something changed culturally as well. When my
| parents grew up any moderately educated person was
| expected to speak different several different languages.
|
| Very few in my generation speak three languages, even in
| my rather international field. Yet my older colleagues
| speak french, German and Spanish like it is nothing. And
| my international colleagues often speak 4+ languages.
|
| I am fine with English being a de facto Lingua Franca,
| but I can't help feeling something has been lost.
| type0 wrote:
| Speaking and using professionally is not the same. One of
| my friends speaks 6-7 languages, but can't use most of
| those for work, it's better to know 2 sufficiently well
| than imagining yourself being a polyglot.
| qwertox wrote:
| > as a second language
|
| It should go beyond that, a second official language, so that
| all signs, documents and government interactions should be
| just as valid in both languages.
| SahAssar wrote:
| I think that if it were to become a official second
| language that would be a natural second step, if nothing
| else just for efficiency in regions that currently have
| multiple languages.
| cupofjoakim wrote:
| I can agree on all of the points except "Speaking English". The
| way things are going it's going to be either that or mandarin
| regardless, but there's so much culture in language that IMO
| it'd be a shame to hurry it up.
| mg wrote:
| I don't know enough about Mandarin to have an opinion on it.
|
| The language has more characters than what fits on a
| keyboard, right? I wonder how typing on a keyboard feels. I
| guess only people who have experience in writing Mandarin
| _and_ English can compare the feeling.
| toxik wrote:
| Writing Mandarin with pinyin is way easier, you just type
| the first letter of each sound in a sentence. "I like to
| eat ice cream" is Wo Xi Huan Chi Bing Qi Lin , written
| entirely by the letter sequence wxhcbql.
| mmmrk wrote:
| English is more likely than Mandarin, because lots of people
| (including the mainland Chinese working in sectors that
| interface with the outside world) can speak some English, but
| very few people outside China speak any Mandarin.
|
| Nassim Taleb wrote about this in
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
| dict....
| triyambakam wrote:
| No daylight savings time
|
| ...would be one that I would add.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Maybe all should use Beijing time, Moscow time, or UTC?
|
| Seriously, I think the planet has bigger problems than
| discussing about DST.
| elaus wrote:
| Found the German.
|
| On a serious note: compared to the other inconsistencies,
| this seems like a very minor one. If we wanted to standardize
| time, we should agree on ONE timezone across the world. But
| of course that seems almost impossible: Having to convince 8
| billion people on a change that has little benefit in their
| everyday life.
| noduerme wrote:
| How would one timezone work? The sun sets at 8:00 in one
| place and sets at 20:00 on the other side of the world?
|
| In terms of working or traveling between time zones, it
| seem like it would be _much_ harder to remember the fact
| that, for instance, people in New York stop work when the
| clock says 17:00 and people in LA work until 20:00, than to
| remember that they are three time zones apart.
| usrusr wrote:
| IIRC the more serious proposals for a global time scheme
| deliberately abandon the old 24:60:60 so that daylight
| expectations, locally as they would be, would have to be
| re-learned anyways. Up to that point that doesn't sound
| that bad to me. But where i don't see any chance is
| durations, how many seconds/minutes/hours. I suspect that
| a change to duration units would be even harder to adapt
| to than metrification of lengths.
| teddyh wrote:
| _So You Want To Abolish Time Zones_
| <https://qntm.org/abolish>
| WithinReason wrote:
| This is linked every time and every time it's debunked.
| It's silly.
| wolletd wrote:
| I propose infinite timezones, you simply calculate the true
| noon from your latitude. Smartphones can do that for us.
| The time at your workplace would be some minutes off the
| time at your home. And when your phone is off, you are
| screwed.
|
| It's like in the old days before railroads when every town
| had it's own time, but even worse.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| > Driving on the right
|
| No thanks
|
| > 2024-06-09 date format
|
| That doesnt infer what you want. Are you saying you want YYYY-
| MM-DD or YYYY-DD-MM
| geysersam wrote:
| They want YYYY-MM-DD
| codetrotter wrote:
| Look at what date it is today, and then try to guess which
| one of these format is the one they are referring to.
|
| Also: one of these is an ISO standard format. The other one
| is a format that no one would use. (DD/MM YYYY is in use, but
| no one would write YYYY-DD-MM.)
| purple-leafy wrote:
| Don't Americans do:
|
| MM-DD-YYYY?
|
| So it would stand to reason that an American commenter may
| be meaning
|
| YYYY-DD-MM
|
| And guessing based on todays date, tell that to commenters
| who check this post in 6 months
| adastra22 wrote:
| Americans do mm/dd/yyyy, but never mm-dd-yyyy
| xjay wrote:
| Underscore as a separator, YYYY_MM_DD:
| 1970_01_01 2024_06_09 2024_12_31
| 16383_12_31
|
| Treated as base-10 number literal in some programming
| languages.
|
| 5 bits for DD [0, 31] + 4 bits for MM [0, 15] + 14 or more
| bits for year [0, 16_383] = 23 bits.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Nobody ever should write YYYY-DD-MM, its the worst of both
| worlds with the structure being both in a non-logical order
| AND not conforming to how dates are pronounced.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Just in case it isn't clear, the usual European date format
| (DD-MM-YYYY though the separators vary) reflects the usual
| pronunciation -- even in Britain and Ireland, where today
| is the ninth of June.
| jogjayr wrote:
| > YYYY-DD-MM
|
| Some people just want to watch the world burn
| kulhur wrote:
| Just use uppercase numbers for the month and lowercase for
| the day. That way you will always know which is more
| significant without any prior knowledge of how the order of
| the digits in decimal numbers work.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Speaking English
|
| Having worked in an international organization where most
| people communicated in English and most people were ESL, going
| back to a company where my native language was the norm was a
| _huge_ benefit in clarity of communications.
|
| Languages certainly form how we think, a universal language
| undoubtedly leads to worse communication and worse ideas.
| falcor84 wrote:
| My understanding was that the parent recommends standardizing
| the native language throughout the world, rather than
| enforcing ESL.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Sure, but how would I teach my children English as a first
| language, when my English is only ESL. And even if I could,
| I would never do that, as a diversity in languages directly
| leads to a diversity in thought.
| graemep wrote:
| I agree about diversity in languages being a good thing.
| I also see minor languages gradually dying out.
|
| First languages do change with time so it does happen,
| and it can be induced to happen. My grandparents all
| spoke English as a first language, but if you go back a
| few more generations only one of my great (or possibly
| great great) grandparents ancestors would have done.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Diversity in thought is great, but I don't think that
| distinct native languages are a prerequisite for that.
| Throughout history, the societies that were able to
| achieve the greatest accomplishments, according to most
| any measure, are those with the most people using the
| same language.
| encom wrote:
| >clarity of communications
|
| I (native dane) work in robotics. Our company has a
| disproportionate amount of non-danes employed, who also are
| not native english speakers. I've been reading and writing
| english since I was very young, but having almost never
| spoken it makes face-to-face communication challenging. And
| not only that, but I encounter colleagues conversing in
| Hindi, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of those
| conversations is one I'm locked out of, and unable to
| contribute to. It's really a Tower Of Babel type of situation
| here. Effective communication is a frustrating chore,
| especially since we're talking about highly technical
| subjects. Upper management thinks our diversity is a
| strength, but I'm just not seeing it from where I'm sitting.
|
| In my next job, this is a situation I will seek to avoid.
| m_eiman wrote:
| > I encounter colleagues conversing in Hindi, Russian,
| Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of those conversations is
| one I'm locked out of, and unable to contribute to.
|
| This is really rude of them, and it's something management
| should work very hard to fix. Because as you say, in
| addition to being rude it's terribly inefficient for the
| company. If they employ people from all over the world,
| they should probably mandate English as the only allowed
| language in just about any situation.
|
| If you have speakers of different languages in a
| conversation or group, it's just common sense to use a
| language everyone can understand and use.
|
| Yes, it's easier for Danes to speak Danish when four out of
| five in the group understand it, but standing around there
| being the fifth person who can't understand a word of
| what's being said is not a nice experience.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >And not only that, but I encounter colleagues conversing
| in Hindi, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of
| those conversations is one I'm locked out of, and unable to
| contribute to.
|
| I had that happen on occasion, every time it felt pretty
| exclusionary and somewhat rude, so I tried to always speak
| in english if that was the only common language among
| people tangentially involved in a conversation.
|
| But even that is certainly not ideal, it has been pretty
| clear to me that, even though I have absolutely no problem
| speaking and understanding English, talking to a native
| speaker in my native language leads to much quicker and
| clearer communication.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Great list! Let's add Euros and universal health care too!
| bjoli wrote:
| The euro was great for Germany. Others weren't that happy.
| netsharc wrote:
| Your comment is grey because people are downvoting you. But
| you're right, and it makes me think HN has more ignoramus
| than curious hackers...
|
| It's economics:
| https://seekingalpha.com/article/564881-how-germany-
| benefite...
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/
| 0...
| morjom wrote:
| Did it happen yesterday?
|
| Did it happen last month?
|
| Did it happen last year?
|
| I feel like that's the order I ask questions if wonder when
| something happened.
| beardyw wrote:
| > Driving on the right
|
| More people in India drive on the left than North America and
| Europe put together.
| jiehong wrote:
| China drives on the right ;)
| beardyw wrote:
| I know more drive on the right than left. I was just
| pointing out that it is not as ubiquitous as many believe.
| lokimedes wrote:
| That would end all communication between frontend and backend
| developers.
| bsza wrote:
| > Speaking English
|
| That's the opposite of what we should do. If a plant
| monoculture is susceptible to diseases, then a language
| monoculture is susceptible to mind-viruses. What would the
| world look like now if every country spoke German in 1933?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Mostly the same as today, if that was the only difference?
|
| Same language is a result of cultural similarity much more so
| than a cause for it. If there is no political or cultural
| pressure to speak the same language, they relatively quickly
| diverge.
| bsza wrote:
| What I was implying is, language barriers are a firewall
| against charismatic, manipulative psychopaths trying to
| brainwash you into doing unspeakable things.
|
| They do so by turning "he has a point" into "who is this
| funny little moustache guy and why does he sound so angry?"
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'd argue lacking a shared global language is more likely
| to isolate a population and ensure they can only hear the
| local mustache man's narrative.
| bsza wrote:
| But having one gives a platform for those narratives to
| spread and potentially become dominant.
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying freedom of press between
| countries should be eliminated (quite the contrary!),
| only that diversity of languages should be preserved. In
| my opinion, this does two things:
|
| 1. Allows more diverse ideas to come into being, as
| language directly affects on one's way of thinking.
|
| 2. Slows the spread of dangerous ideas, due to some of
| their appeal (or the charisma of their advocates) being
| lost in translation.
| echoangle wrote:
| You think germany would have taken over europe by
| convincing them if the citizens of the other countries
| spoke german?
| bsza wrote:
| They had Europe's most accomplished public speaker and
| its best propagandist at their disposal, both of whom had
| a better understanding, or at least a more insidious
| approach, to crowd psychology than perhaps anyone at the
| time.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| That was already sort of the case though, at least among the
| intellectuals.
|
| Up until WWII, a huge part of the scientific discourse was
| held in German. The language's relevance had waned a bit by
| 1933, but it was still a widely spoken and understood
| language in Europe, much more so than today.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Maybe, maybe the world should standardize on:
| Driving on the left Speaking creole The metric
| system The 09/06/2024 date format The Kelvin
| scale The french decimal time system The
| AuthaGraph projection
| asddubs wrote:
| 230v 50Hz
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Speaking English
|
| Let's standardize that to the Newspeak version of English for
| clarity and to make hackers happy.
| emchammer wrote:
| Sorry, why would you write 2024? I thought it's the year 5784.
| euroderf wrote:
| > Speaking English
|
| Not worth discussing until some serious improvements to the
| spelling system. Currently learning it requires learning two
| obnoxiously independent systems, the written and the spoken.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Aligning the EPAL pallet and the 30' container is another great
| candidate that is just not going to happen.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Which one should be changed? The pallet or the container?
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Whichever is cheaper. My gut feeling says pallet, but I
| have no idea.
| matsemann wrote:
| One surprising (after we got a ticket..) thing about parking laws
| in Sweden is that you're also only allowed to park on the right
| side of the road / with the car in the direction of the traffic.
| This has the benefit of that when you're leaving the street
| parking, you are sitting close to the lane and can look behind
| you for coming cars and only cross one lane. Compared to parking
| on the "wrong" side, where you're sitting on the opposite side of
| the lane in your car, having your view of the opposing lane
| blocked by the parked car in front of you.
|
| As a cyclist I wish we had the same rule where I live. Far too
| often a car parked on the street will not see me when they try to
| exit their spot, as it's only when half the front of the car is
| in the cycle lane they actually can see past the other car.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| This is the case in most of Europe. Another reason is that cars
| are required to have red reflectors at the back, but no
| reflectors at the front.
| gerikson wrote:
| As a Swede it amazes me that some countries allow parking "in
| the wrong direction". I've never even thought about it, and I
| don't know if it's a written rule (I'm sure it is, just it;s
| been a long time since I got my license).
| edb_123 wrote:
| You don't have to go further than Norway to be allowed to
| park on both sides of the street (unless indicated otherwise
| by signs) as well as park in both directions.
|
| I believe many Norwegians have received parking tickets when
| visiting Sweden because if this difference. I wasn't aware of
| this myself until recently.
| gfna wrote:
| In finland this has been allowed since a few years ago. It is
| quite useful on narrow sidestreets in residential areas where
| it helps hunting for parking spaces. The biggest problem
| seems to be that now many misinterpret the law that one must
| leave 5 meters empty space before pedestrian crossings as
| being measured from the front of the car, ie not applying
| when parking on the "wrong" side
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also it seems less understood or followed rule is that it
| is also technically 5 meters from any crossing lane. And
| then sometimes whole intersection is very nebulous. As
| pedestrian crossing can be faraway from intersection and
| still be part of intersection...
|
| Sometimes things just get weird.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Over here in Poland it's allowed in areas of "low traffic" -
| a term not defined anywhere in the law.
|
| I did it the other day and it felt illegal.
| type0 wrote:
| It feels much more illegal in Italy
| gmac wrote:
| As a Brit it amazes me that this is even a concept. I've
| certainly never heard of it. We park whichever way is
| convenient.
| scarytom wrote:
| If you read the British highway code, you will find that we
| have this rule too.
| noduerme wrote:
| Where do you live?! You couldn't park facing the wrong way in
| any big city in America, either. Maybe on small residential
| streets it's not always enforced.
| matsemann wrote:
| Norway. It might be more common than I anticipate, just weird
| that we've been parking in Sweden for decades not knowing
| this and never having received a ticket. I guess it has
| helped that it until a few years ago was quite hard to
| enforce tickets on foreign cars, so maybe they just skipped
| us and thus we never learned our lesson.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| I learned to drive in Seattle, where it's 100% allowed, and
| then moved east and almost got ticketed my first day in my
| new city.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Seattle is noteworthy for being going against the norm in
| this case. As a midwesterner, it definitely surprised me to
| see so many "contra-parked" cars the first time I visited
| Seattle. It was one of those things that was just so deeply
| ingrained that it never occurred to me to park against
| traffic like that.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Assuming you're in the US: It's usually the rule here (state
| laws vary) but rarely enforced.
| scarytom wrote:
| This is in the UK highway code too
| usr1106 wrote:
| When I was trainee in Stockholm in the 1980s most (if not all)
| escalators in the metro still run such that you had to take the
| left one.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Train tracks in Sweden are still left-hand traffic
| usr1106 wrote:
| Like in France (excl. Alsace and Lyon metro). But which track
| trains use has extremely limited effects on the general
| public.
| piva00 wrote:
| It's barely noticeable except when I come back from abroad
| and expect train doors to open on the wrong side, it
| happens maybe a couple of times until I get used to it
| again.
| usr1106 wrote:
| For trains the door side is hardly ever standard, even if
| the train always uses a certain track out of 2
| directional ones. Some stations have center platforms,
| others have side platforms. Maybe there is some network
| in the world with only one type, but in most cases they
| come in a mix.
| noduerme wrote:
| Still on escalators everywhere, if you're standing, you stand
| on the right. If you're passing, you pass on the left.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Everywhere as everywhere in Sweden?
|
| I'd guess in London it's the opposite (has been a while,
| cannot remember).
| dom96 wrote:
| In London on the tube escalators you stand on the right and
| pass on the left.
| chronogram wrote:
| The escalators in London had signs with "please stand
| right" the times I've been there.
| yencabulator wrote:
| In Tokyo it's common to stand on the left and pass on the
| right.
|
| https://www.getaroundjapan.jp/archives/4730
| lynguist wrote:
| And opposite in Western Japan!
| echoangle wrote:
| That's not related to left-hand traffic though, right? You
| also overtake other cars on the left when driving in right-
| hand traffic.
| rjsw wrote:
| I was in Sweden then, was only 2yo though so don't remember it,
| my parents felt the change went smoothly.
| chronogram wrote:
| A trucker at the time said the transition was instant: people
| just did it, it was that easy.
| kabouseng wrote:
| There is a joke, that in order to facilitate such a change, it
| should be done in more manageable steps. So on day 1, only the
| motorcycles switch over to the other side of driving, on day 2
| the motor vehicles, and on day 3 the trucks and busses switches
| over...
| Archelaos wrote:
| My version of the joke:
|
| "Have you heared: Britain wants to switch to right-hand
| traffic?"
|
| ...
|
| "Yes, but they want to do it step by step."
|
| ???
|
| "They want to start with lorries first."
| user20180120 wrote:
| Making everyone speak English should not happen!
|
| We need to understand that the language you are able to think in
| - limits your thinking.
|
| Some languages have things you cannot translate into English.
|
| These non translateable concepts do not exist in the Western
| world view point.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I'm curious about examples. I know many languages do not have
| word::word translations, but a concept that cannot be
| translated -- even if it needs a full sentence, is a very
| different thing.
| Falkvinge wrote:
| It's like how the Inuit have 35 words for "snow", or the
| Swedish have 51 words for "tax evasion". Some cultures have a
| need for nuances that necessarily gets reflected into the
| local language, nuances which will be lost when bluntly
| translating into the one category-level word in English.
| Nzen wrote:
| The Inuit example is a common misconstrual [0]. The
| ancestor language has three root words that they might
| modify with a suffix in the way we might use a phrase 'snow
| on the ground'.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
| neontomo wrote:
| There are words/concepts that require you to have lived in
| that culture for some amount of time to understand the
| cultural baggage connected to the word, and how the word
| actually describes a part of the culture. As a Swede, one
| such word for me is `lagom`, which is often translated as
| `just right`, but this is a cop-out that doesn't do it
| justice.
|
| To understand it you must know, on a deeper level why a Swede
| values things being lagom, and this is surprisingly hard to
| put into words because it involves history, language, value
| systems, social patterns and even concepts like gratitude
| towards simple things. This word encapsulates a really big
| aspect of Swedish culture, making it impossible to translate
| accurately.
| acheron wrote:
| Sapir-Whorf is nonsense.
| mistermann wrote:
| It is a shame you are unable to appreciate the irony of this
| comment.
| Arnt wrote:
| I cannot resist... I have to tell... when they did it, they had
| non-stop media coverage, as much as could possibly be done.
|
| An hour or two after traffic switched, TV broadcast from
| Svinesund, the biggest of the road crossings to Norway, and a
| major route for road haulage, and a reporter said something like
| "here we have the driver of a Norwegian 18-wheeler, <name>. Well,
| <name>, what do think of the big reform?" Norwegian, looking a
| little dense and speaking slowly: "Uh, what reform?" There was
| big signage everywhere. The reporter tried dropping a hint, the
| Norwegian truck driver refused to have noticed any change in the
| driving rules. Camera showed the very big 18-wheeler. The
| reporter dropped increasingly clearer hints and looked
| discomfited, the Norwegian still said "no, what reform, is
| anything new?" and eventually they cut the interview and switched
| back to the studio.
| hnarn wrote:
| This almost sounds like a sketch since Sweden has "Norway
| jokes" where the punchline is consistently how dumb Norwegians
| are -- a structure that I'm sure is mirrored in Norway and
| similarly in other countries (england/scotland, france/belgium
| maybe?)
| lb1lf wrote:
| Oh yes.
|
| In Norway we have the exact same jokes about the Swedes.
|
| One quip which did the rounds in the papers prior to the
| Swedes starting to drive on the right was that they would
| perform the switch in several phases - first heavy traffic,
| then cars a month later...
| stareatgoats wrote:
| > In Norway we have the exact same jokes about the Swedes
|
| This is a fairly recent development. When I moved to Sweden
| in the 1970s, it was so bad I learned Swedish at
| accelerated rate in order to avoid the kneejerk compulsion
| of many (if not most) Swedes to tell their favorite jokes
| about how dumb Norwegians seemed to be. No doubt a
| consequence of century-old rivalry and the fact that Sweden
| during the early part of the last century was the larger,
| richer, most industrialized and organized society in
| comparison. And they believed much of it to be actually
| true, in the way that derogatory humor always evokes some
| degree of "no smoke without fire." To this day, I meet
| swedes who are surprised at hearing that bananas are not
| actually called "guleboj" in Norway (bended yellow) - a
| reference to how Norwegian is not as anglicized as Swedish,
| as there has been a pushback against this trend in Norway
| historically. As Norway has become progressively richer
| these jokes in Sweden about Norwgians have more or less
| disappeared however.
|
| The notion that Norwegians nowadays have the same jokes
| about Swedes is something I hear repeated, but it saddens
| me nonetheless because it doesn't rhyme with the spirit I
| remember from my childhood. If true, then it means that a
| fair number of my present (Swedish) countrymen are being
| denigrated, perhaps because Norway can now pride themselves
| on being the richest (real) country in the world per
| capita, so rich that a lot of swedes migrate here to take
| the worst paid jobs in restaurants and in hospitals. They
| are popular as employees because they understand the
| language and are hard working. And probably because they
| can take denigrating jokes, maybe because well, they used
| to do it too. But it's not all that funny, really.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| As I remember the 1970s joke wars, they were driven by
| tabloid newspapers on both sides, and all in good fun
| between friendly nations.
|
| I learned later that many of the jokes were translated
| American "Polish jokes".
| stareatgoats wrote:
| > all in good fun
|
| Well, not everybody's idea of good fun I guess, friendly
| nations or not.
|
| But what do I know, I only visit Norway once in a blue
| moon nowadays. I have actually yet to hear a good "swede
| joke" at all actually; maybe they are just a myth?
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| > I have actually yet to hear a good "swede joke" at all
| actually; maybe they are just a myth?
|
| Perhaps most of the good Swede jokes moved to Minnesota?
|
| (seriously, a bunch of the intra-scandinavian humor seems
| to be of Scandahoovian-American origin. Like the "10,000
| Swedes chased through the weeds / by one Norwegian"
| thing.)
| fl7305 wrote:
| > As Norway has become progressively richer these jokes
| in Sweden about Norwgians have more or less disappeared
| however.
|
| Yeah, the prevailing notion in Sweden is now that Norway
| is so much better off that we swedes should declare war
| on Norway.
|
| After which we promptly surrender, and all our problems
| become Norway's problems instead.
| rags2riches wrote:
| Similar jokes were made when the outlook for a Swedish
| NATO ascension was bad. The much more cool-headed and
| diplomatically grounded Finns were set to join NATO
| without trouble. So the solution was obvious: Sweden
| should join Finland instead of NATO.
|
| Relevant context is that Norway was the junior partner of
| a personal union with Sweden for most of the nineteenth
| century and until 1905. Also Sweden and Finland was one
| and the same realm for six centuries or so until 1809.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| also some other Scandinavians captured and sold Finns as
| slaves until about 1100.. some things are hard to forget
| once known widely
| type0 wrote:
| Yeah, but Lithuanians were the biggest slave traders on
| the Baltic sea up until until Christianity was widely
| adopted in the 15th century
| jackothy wrote:
| As a Norwegian I have bonded with Swedes on several
| occasions over having the same jokes about each other.
| Not that the jokes are always geniously funny or
| anything, but that would be both an unrealistic
| expectation and completely unnecessary. Some unserious
| rivalry is fantastic to have among friends.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Saddens me that I'll likely never speak Swedish as well
| as you speak English. Jag bor inte i Sverige ochsa.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the only Norge jokes I heard (in California) were about the
| cowardice of Swedes in battle.. nothing about being dumb..
| that was well before the year 2000, admit
| ben_w wrote:
| I have no idea if the Scots think or joke that the English
| are stupid, but can say that the English have a joke pattern
| of "An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman..." and it's
| always and only the Irish who are picked on.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| In Spain they tell "Basque jokes".
|
| The Basque person in the joke is always called Patxi, a
| stereotypical Basque name (kind of like calling an Irish
| person "Paddy").
| Arnt wrote:
| Supposed to be real. And it's not typical of the
| Norwegian/Swede genre -- in that the direction is clear,
| while here it might be either a dumb Norwegian driver or a
| Swedish journalist having his leg pulled.
| playingalong wrote:
| The somewhat hidden (non financial) cost seems to have been
| giving up on some of the existing public transport services -
| like trams. The Wikipedia article mentions that briefly towards
| the end.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't get why. Can't you just run the trams in the opposite
| direction?
| mongol wrote:
| It was not done throughout, but cities with trams with doors
| on only one side posed a problem. So it is my understanding
| that when such retrofits would have been to costly, the trams
| were decommissioned instead.
| renhanxue wrote:
| The trams were already on the way out in the 1950's, they were
| seen as a thing of the past that were inhibiting the
| development of the new car-centric urban areas. Several systems
| closed well before H-day, in the 50's and early 60's. The ones
| that closed on or around H-day were mainly in Stockholm and in
| Helsingborg.
|
| In Stockholm, plans had been made as early as the 1940's to
| gradually replace the tram network with the metro, and that did
| in fact happen. Today's green and red metro lines do in fact
| use old tram line alignments to a pretty significant extent
| (the younger blue line was all new and mostly blasted out of
| the bedrock deep underground). In 1957 the city council
| formally decided that the tram networks should be gone by the
| mid-1970's, at which time most of the infrastructure and
| rolling stock would have been considered end-of-life. All H-day
| did was accelerate this by a couple of years. Two suburban
| lines were kept though and they survive to this day, but at
| least up until the 1990's their future was kind of uncertain.
| Things finally changed in the mid-90's, and new light rail
| alignments started to get built again.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| In early 2001, my wife and I visited the beautiful country of New
| Zealand. The travel books told us to be aware that traffic flows
| opposite from the US. When we collected our rental car in
| Invercargill, there was a sticker near the steering wheel that
| read: "To stay alive, drive on the left!".
|
| We had a good laugh and drove away from the airport. We soon
| discovered that the raised middle finger was international. :)
| nisse72 wrote:
| You probably also saw the arrows on the road itself as a
| reminder of the correct direction of travel. Those are always
| near any places tourists are likely to stop, since after a
| break it's common to forget which side to be on.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Having a non-binding referendum and moving against the 85% vote
| takes balls. And we're forever greatful that they did. Presumably
| people thought it would be inconvenient and voted no, while
| politicians realized the cost of doing it later would be much
| larger than just ripping the band aid off. At the time, the
| number of massive motorway crossings and similar was probably
| nearly zero. Today the cost would be unimaginable. We would have
| caved in the 70s at the latest, and at a cost many times larger.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If you already drove cars where drivers sit left side as
| Wikipedia says, what exactly were those 85% thinking about?
| Clearly not road safety?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think a large part were just "no" to anything. Few I
| imagine were against right hand traffic but many simply
| resisted change. Only just half of voters voted, however.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| NIMBYism in a nutshell.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Downvoted, but the down-voters have't given thought to
| how closely coorelated this is.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I didn't expect Swedes to be so contrarian for the sake of
| it. Surely nobody likes to put the whole car in the
| oncoming lane every time to check if you can even start
| overtaking...
| occz wrote:
| Re-frame the question "I have to re-learn something" vs "I
| can just keep on doing what I am doing today", and I think
| you're pretty close to the answer.
| boxed wrote:
| It's funny. It took cowardice to declare the referendum, and
| then they were forced into having even bigger balls than if
| they had done the right thing in the first place.
| air7 wrote:
| My optimistic take on this is that the politicians of the time
| had the actual peoples' best interests at heart and realized
| that even though the change was unpopular, it was the right
| thing to do and that people would eventually realize that. I'm
| sure very few of those 83% held their opinion a few years after
| the change.
|
| Also 83% is really a lot... While seemingly obviously correct
| now, the vast majority didn't see it that way then. I can only
| assume that If I was there I would be against it too.
|
| Nowadays with mass media and powerful almost immediate public
| reaction to government, such "you'll thank me later" moves seem
| less likely, and arguably, we are worse off for it.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Nowadays with mass media and powerful almost immediate
| public reaction to government, such "you'll thank me later"
| moves seem less likely, and arguably, we are worse off for
| it.
|
| The problem isn't mass media, the problem is that they did
| use this card many times over the past decades to promote
| neoliberal policies, and in retrospect it's clear that nobody
| is thanking them.
|
| The main lesson is that you can indeed force things on
| people, and when you do so for good reasons you'll be thanked
| later, but you must do it wisely and be sure that people will
| thank you, otherwise you're just destroying public's
| confidence in politicians (which doesn't matter to the
| neoliberals anyway, since they don't think State is a
| valuable institustion in the first place...)
| dagurp wrote:
| New York should show the same courage
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > changing to driving on the right reduced accidents while
| overtaking, as people already drove left-hand drive vehicles,
| thereby having a better view of the road ahead
|
| They already used left-hand drive vehicles but rode on the left??
| That's just ridiculous and obvious why they switched...
| agency wrote:
| The "see also" section links to a similar changeover in Okinawa
| which mentions that a country having more than one traffic
| direction is in violation of the Geneva convention (on road
| traffic)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention_on_Road_Tr...
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| If this is a violation, the United States needs to fix its own
| problem. Left driving is the rule in the US Virgin Islands, and
| it's especially dangerous because (like Sweden before 1967)
| most cars there have left-hand steering and the roads are
| narrow.
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think the US Virgin Islands are part of the _country_
| called the United States of America. https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Territories_of_the_United_Stat...:
|
| _"American territories are under American sovereignty and,
| consequently, may be treated as part of the United States
| proper in some ways and not others (i.e., territories belong
| to, but are not considered to be a part of, the United
| States). Unincorporated territories in particular are not
| considered to be integral parts of the United States, and the
| Constitution of the United States applies only partially in
| those territories."_
|
| (This kind of stuff can be very convolutrd. There are parts
| of France that aren't in the EU, for example.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France: _"Overseas
| France (French: France d 'outre-mer, also France
| ultramarine)[note 3] consists of 13 French territories
| outside Europe, mostly the remains of the French colonial
| empire that remained a part of the French state under various
| statuses after decolonization. Most, but not all, are part of
| the European Union"_)
| jackothy wrote:
| I know of this one single intersection in northern Stockholm that
| still enforces left-hand traffic:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/uGWr28JUQnEh9cXc6
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Doesn't need to be related to left-handed past. Just imagine
| those lanes were the other way around, then if you and me were
| going on Valhallavagen opposite directions and wanted to U turn
| over there at the same time then we can easily be in the way of
| each other.
|
| When you have two multi lane one way roads going opposite ways
| and want add a two-way connection between them then you often
| want to put lanes the opposite of normal way. Another example
| is all roads connecting Chiang Mai's old city outer and inner
| circle road. The country is left-handed but those connecting
| roads are right handed, the opposite of Stockholm intersection
| jackothy wrote:
| Makes perfect sense, thank you!
|
| I haven't seen any historical maps of the road so I no longer
| have any reason to believe it stems from that. I was just
| going based on that (flawed) logic.
| mncharity wrote:
| > all roads connecting Chiang Mai's old city outer and inner
| circle road.
|
| Such as https://maps.app.goo.gl/uRzHBaZAY38rnjVS9 .
| fragmede wrote:
| Diverging diamond interchange
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| > Approximately 90 percent of Swedes drove left-hand drive
| vehicles
|
| This is probably why the adjustment was so smooth.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Interesting how changing up the side of the road drivers use
| elevated their attention, resulting in less accidents, until the
| activity became second nature again.
|
| _The relatively smooth changeover saw a temporary reduction in
| the number of accidents... These initial improvements did not
| last, however. The number of motor insurance claims returned to
| "normal" over the next six weeks_
|
| Iceland saw a similar effect on "H-dagurinn" when they made the
| switch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dagurinn):
|
| _Traffic accident rates briefly dropped as drivers
| overcompensated for the increased risk from driving on the
| unfamiliar side of the road, before returning to the level
| following the trend prior to the changeover._
| matsemann wrote:
| Yes, it's a thing that makes it hard for city planners and
| transport engineers when they test out new things. _Any_ change
| often improves status quo in the start, so need to run it for
| long enough to actually gather valid data.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Sounds like we should have chaotic traffic patterns to
| improve safety.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| When I first visited Kuala Lumpur in Indonesia I was
| dumbfounded how there wasn't endless car accidents. The
| taxi from the airport was one of the scariest things in my
| life. Roads marked with 3 lanes had cars 5 abreast with
| scooters and motorbikes still finding just enough space to
| lane split.
|
| It really seemed like chaos to me. Didn't see a single
| bingle.
| cozzyd wrote:
| It sort of makes sense since most accidents are probably
| due to either inattentiveness or excessive speed.
| Too wrote:
| Something interesting is that roads don't have the same
| properties if you just drive them the other direction.
|
| It's not something you will immediately notice by just looking at
| the road, you have to think of the full picture.
|
| Imagine a fork vs a merge. You have buffer zones for off-ramps.
| Tight merges. Psychology of drivers. Reaction to signage. All
| this alters the flow of traffic and create undesired bottlenecks.
|
| In the bigger cities you can still find a few examples of such
| originally left roads around, with less ideal flow. Usually
| around tunnels where rework is difficult.
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