On 09 Jan 2005 16:21:31 GMT, Niklas Karlsson wrote:

Martin Underwood wrote on Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:33:23 -0000:
"Niklas Karlsson" wrote in message
...
Mark Brader wrote on Sun, 09 Jan 2005 04:44:21 -0000:
Perhaps this was done in preparation for a changeover to driving on the
right. After all, now that Britain is part of the EU...

Sweden had left-hand driving until September 3, 1967.

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

The costs of doing this in the UK today would be prohibitive, both to
highway departments and to private individuals:
[snip]
Oh, I have no doubt. I expect it would be prohibitive in Sweden as well,
had the switchover been postponed until today. I was mostly just
stirring the pot and adding a data point. :-)

It is probably this last point that is the biggest problem: in Sweden, "most
cars were LHD imports" according to the Wikipedia article (what about all
the home-produced Volvos?)

And Saabs? (Got to stick up for my hometown...) I don't know if the
statement is accurate, but in general I suspect at least a good-sized
share were LHD imports.


I've often seen it said that most cars in Sweden were already left
hand drive, but haven't seen any really plausible reason why. The
argument about imports isn't very convincing: if these imports came
from elsewhere in continental Europe, surely most of them would have
been cars that were also made in right hand drive form for the British
Isles.

Incidentally the Wikipedia entry is at variance with other accounts
that I have read when it comes to buses: apparently most buses in
Sweden were just replaced when the changeover took place and only a
few were converted

Martin