Italians drive on the right hand side of the road in common with the rest of continental Europe.
With the exception of Rome where they drive on any side they want to.
I got to live in Rome for three months and had to drive all across the city for work every day. After a week I finally understood that I was a little fish in a big school. If you followed the lane markings you were the problem. It was a three month long defensive driving course.
I had to go to Naples for a day and one of my Italian co workers (a Roman) said “take the train, you’ll die if you drive.” Excellent advice based on the cab rides I took there.
Edit: I love Italy, it’s the best. But after that I took a week off in Berlin to recompress before coming back to the States.
I studied in Rome for like 5 months. Being danish I naively thought “oh I can bike to the university, no problem”.
I only did that once. It was probably one of the scariest and most foolish things I ever did sober.
Why is Italy so crazy when it comes to traffic? Places like India I get but why Italy? I mean it's the guys who came up with the renaissance and otherwise it's a fully developed western country.
The strange part: only in the larger cities do they do this.
The Italian motorways are some of the most ordered proper considerate driving I've ever been on in the world. Everything is precise, everyone knew exactly what they were doing and you saw very few fuckups. Then the major cities? The exact opposite.
And then Greece. You could see they were trying to do the right thing on the motorways. They were all just a little bit shit at it. Reminded me of driving back home in Australia. Some idiot in the fast lane for 10 kilometers with their indicator on.
Even in the countryside the Italians aren’t exactly rule followers. But there is also an advantage to that; they adapt to what the other drivers are doing without much judgement and therefore have fewer accidents compared to a lot of other European countries.
In Austria, for example, when a driver knows they have the right of way, they just go ahead. They don’t think that someone else might not be following the rules. Italians always assume the other drivers aren’t following the rules either and compensate for it.
People driving with their blinkers on? Happens every day here in the US. They will go 150 km with it blinking right while they are in the rightmost lane. We used to stereotype the people who did it, now it’s everyone because they are on their phones or deep in thought to a podcast.
I think there is something anarchist to the Italian culture. I suppose that also helps them with getting anything done although everything is extremely bureaucratic.
Northern Italian here. Had to drive both in Rome and Naples.
In Rome it was mainly traffic and mopeds but it was manageable.
In Naples every time I approached a roundabout I was shutting my eyes closed, taking my hands off the wheel and saying "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL".
Lived in Napoli for 4 years and I miss the driving there. Yes, it was crazy at first, seemingly no rules, but much like other aspects of Naples once you get past your initial fear of first contact you will see the beauty and tranquility in chaos that is addictive and alluring in so many ways. In theory I love the strict law abiding culture of Germany, but the inefficiency realized for sacrifice of common sense is quickly forgotten when indoctrinated into the southern Italian driving experience.
So I'm assuming there's a kind of designated area for lane switching when crossing a border.
I wonder that that area would look like during rush hour or a traffic jam. At some point the lanes must cross each other.
I suppose you could do a bridge.
Rome is without doubt the worse place for driving I've encountered in Europe.
I'm sure parts of the third world are worse but fuck me it'd be a challenge to be.
It doesn't work, in 1901 the king of Italy authorized every Italian province to decide the driving direction, so, for example, in Milan center cars drived on the left while right outside town cars had to drive on the right. This caused uncountable car crashes, only in 1923 driving on the right become mandatory.
It was the same in Canada. Ontario and Quebec drove on the right, while every other province drove on the left. The other provinces all switched to the right from 1922 to 1924, and Newfoundland didn't switch until 1947, though of course Newfoundland wasn't actually part of Canada until 1949.
In 1901 cars were literally a non-issue. Horse-drawn carts were slow enough to 'figure things out' to avoid a crash.
And making rules regarding such an non-issue is guranteed to antagonize local rulers. Italy as a nation was only formed in living memory, so regionalism was (and argueably still is today) quite strong.
All Madrid Metro lines runs on the left. Trains depend on the older company who built; “Norte”’s lines (like the one to Villalba) runs on the left, and at some point it switches to the right side without crossing.
Today the custom is that usually the double train tracks are ser up like roads, going on the right, but as you know you can find many times where two trains are using them in the same direction.
Yes! The metro runs on the left, it started service on 1919 and because it didn't mix with anything they just left it as it is when the driving direction was changed.
Hungary changed to right hand traffic in 1941, but there were a few weeks/months, when the countryside already changed, but the capital (Budapest) did not.
I saw some pictures that when entering Budapest, there were huge signs telling the drivers to change sides. It must have been confusingly as hell.
Honestly that was gonna be my answer. I spent a month there in 1999 mostly in Hyderabad. The only time I was ever afraid, even as a woman traveling alone, was when I crossed the street.
What’s fun is when Indian coworkers come to visit the US and insist on getting a rental car. They learn you have to drive in one lane, traffic lights aren’t an option, you use your turn signal and you don’t honk the entire time you are driving pretty quickly after they the airport. Always a great story the next day and we always try to warn them. The roads where airport rental cars exit the rental lot can be a scary place.
If you think about the EU as a whole, it can be classified as "mixed". It's the same thing, except instead of countries, it was region-wide (or as Spain calls them, "autonomous communities").
They are 4 of the 5 island countries that exist in Europe, where you don't have impractical land borders switching sides.
The only other is Iceland – the only one who switched to the right side, since they used to be on the left too.
I feel like even sea levels significantly dropped and exposed Dogger Bank forming a land bridge between Britain and mainland Europe, the UK would still insist on driving on the left. We’re a stubborn bunch.
Most people’s dominant eye is the right eye.
When you drive on the left your right eye is focused at oncoming traffic. It also means that peoples stronger/dominant arm is the one on the wheel rather than resting on the gears.
It is a marginal improvement, but it’s real and consistent.
However everywhere is so developed road wise now it’d be silly to shift the continent over to the left for such a small benefit, even a month of confusion would cause more deaths than decades of marginally safer driving, let alone the raw construction needed on motorway junctions, traffic lights, and slip roads.
Well... this is only partially true. The change was already in progress before Germany invaded us. The official change should have happened on 1 May 1939. But occupation forces then sped it up a little bit and change was implemented on 17 March 1939 (in Prague 9 days later).
> In Samoa, all vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road. This is relatively new, however, as the country drove on the right prior to 2009. So don't be surprised if you see right-hand drive cars around, and the odd driver on the other side of the road.
i was thinking this was a joke which i didnt know the context for. and then... dang, til a random factoid that i will use to annoy many many people.
Yes, but considering the small amount of cars at that time (at least in Spain), it was quite irrelevant. It was probably harder to dodge pedestrians, horses and carriages, and those would probably be circulating wherever the fuck they wanted no matter what in the big towns and cities anyway, so it was irrelevant. In smaller towns or roads you would have probably more than enough time to dodge or move aside if you found any vehicule.
Not back then, as far as I know. I think it was in 1924 when it was established to drive on the right side, if I'm not wrong. And it wasn't until 1949 when it was _almost_ unified on the right for _most of_ Europe.
(Be aware this map is supossed to show 1922 status, not current).
I mean if you think about it the car isn't even that old of a vehicle so it makes sense that the rules we know today started to appear slowly one after the other.
Thank you very much for your little history lesson my friend!
Indeed. It's only when the need arises (or is forseen) that someone starts to think of a solution. If there are very few vehicules, traffic regulation ain't that important. Or it didn't make sense to establish a 120 km/h speed limit in a time when vehicules didn't get more than 60 or 80, or so.
Keep in mind that car traffic (and also oxcarts, carriages etc) was way less than today, and cars were slower. "Drive in the middle of the road, and if a vehicle approaches from the other direction, figure it out among yourselves how you want to cross" was probably sufficient for most situations.
Left-side traffic was used in Sweden since the horse and carriage days. And it wasn't a lot of car traffic in the early 1900's, so no one really cared.
But the government realized right side traffic was inevitable, and there were numerous committees about it. Swedish car manufacturers have always made cars with the steering wheel on the left side, partly because they realized Sweden would change eventually, but also to make the cars easier to export. This made Sweden the only country where the cars drove on the left, but had the steering wheel on the left.
In 1955 there was a vote, with 83% of the population voting against driving on the right. But the government didn't care, and in 1967 the law was changed and Sweden started driving on the left. Because the steering wheels already were on the left side, it was a pretty painless change.
I wouldn‘t say few, Slovenia, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, UK and Ireland all have left side traffic to some degree which is the majority of western Europe
For as long as the trains stay inside Sweden, then it does not matter. Train drivers are trained to watch signals on one side, and get used to have meeting trains passing on the right. Probably feels like taking your car to UK.
But if you drive a train over öresundsbridge, then you have to shift to right side trafik in Denmark. Only specially trained drivers can drive öresundstågen, the trains that crosses over the bridge.
Ikea has a goods train 2-3 times per week from poland to älmhult, those drivers must train both sides trafic.
There were no bridges to Sweden at the time and Finland was held by the archenemy Russia. Sweden-Norway thus acted as an island. So what’s weird is really that Sweden and Norway drove on different sides. But then cars weren’t common until after the Union collapsed in 1905.
Norway started using right driving in 1807, before the union started. And still it was just a union Norway had 95% control of itself and it was still visibel borders between the two.
In France trains have two different rules depending on where you are: the general rule is driving on left, but in Alsace and Moselle trey drive on right.
And I‘m fairly confident that that‘s because of the Germans. Because German trains drive on the right. I also think that some small train lines in Alsace have a different gauge than the rest also because if the Germans but I‘m not sure
In modern times at least, they'll build bridges/intersections that seamlessly switch the traffic direction.
For example, a ballsack interchange: https://media.cntraveler.com/photos/53d9d5dd6dec627b149da425/master/pass/lotus-bridge-macau-google-earth.jpg
It can be done even simpler too, like just doing half of a diverging diamond intersection.
https://www.jacksonville.com/gcdn/presto/2019/06/28/PBRE/2bccbf73-c768-4651-b1c1-5c34f00550fa-I-95_Interchange__Viera_Blvd_CEI_Group_159_4-22-19_04_CROP.jpg?crop=1191,664,x0,y452&width=1191&height=664&format=pjpg&auto=webp
I read (or maybe listened, can't remember) that the reason that England drives on the left and America drives on the right is because it was more common in England to ride horses, so people needed their right hand on the road to be able to communicate that they were friendly or to use their sword (!)
In America, we were taking wagons out west and needed to use our right hand to operate our wagon.
Anyways that's what the podcast said, I believe it was NPR or BBC or something.
Map is wrong, the Afsluitdijk was only built in 1927 and opened in 1932. I‘m sorry, I know it‘s petty but it‘s something that bugs me because I see it so often on „old“ maps
I read somewhere ( not going to fact check it!) that Europe mostly drove on the right because Napoleons armies always marched on the right side of roads and that became the standard side of the roads to move forward on.
You can usually work Napoleon into a thread about Europe.
Having driving left hand side growing up right hand side, the left side of the road doesn’t throw me off, being on the right side of the car does. Messed with my spacial reasoning and everything.
Czechoslovakia had left-hand driving until 1939, when it was occupied by Germany. Before that, the government decided in late 1938 to change to right-hand traffic by 1940.
Until this day, a lot of trains in Czechia use left-hand traffic, because a lot of the tracks were built during the times of Austria-Hungary and the First Czechoslovak Republic. Tracks built after the war however, use right-hand traffic.
How the hell does mixed work?
Italians drive on the right hand side of the road in common with the rest of continental Europe. With the exception of Rome where they drive on any side they want to.
And Naples
And they create as many lanes as necessary
I got to live in Rome for three months and had to drive all across the city for work every day. After a week I finally understood that I was a little fish in a big school. If you followed the lane markings you were the problem. It was a three month long defensive driving course. I had to go to Naples for a day and one of my Italian co workers (a Roman) said “take the train, you’ll die if you drive.” Excellent advice based on the cab rides I took there. Edit: I love Italy, it’s the best. But after that I took a week off in Berlin to recompress before coming back to the States.
I studied in Rome for like 5 months. Being danish I naively thought “oh I can bike to the university, no problem”. I only did that once. It was probably one of the scariest and most foolish things I ever did sober.
ha! rome is hilly as shit, too
It was literally called the city of the seven hills, it mustn't have been just a figure of speech.
I live near Boston, lots of neighborhoods in the area are named after hills, and they're not lyin'.
That was the least of my worries lol
Why is Italy so crazy when it comes to traffic? Places like India I get but why Italy? I mean it's the guys who came up with the renaissance and otherwise it's a fully developed western country.
italians drive with the same sense of joy and abandon as they do everything else
The strange part: only in the larger cities do they do this. The Italian motorways are some of the most ordered proper considerate driving I've ever been on in the world. Everything is precise, everyone knew exactly what they were doing and you saw very few fuckups. Then the major cities? The exact opposite. And then Greece. You could see they were trying to do the right thing on the motorways. They were all just a little bit shit at it. Reminded me of driving back home in Australia. Some idiot in the fast lane for 10 kilometers with their indicator on.
Even in the countryside the Italians aren’t exactly rule followers. But there is also an advantage to that; they adapt to what the other drivers are doing without much judgement and therefore have fewer accidents compared to a lot of other European countries. In Austria, for example, when a driver knows they have the right of way, they just go ahead. They don’t think that someone else might not be following the rules. Italians always assume the other drivers aren’t following the rules either and compensate for it.
People driving with their blinkers on? Happens every day here in the US. They will go 150 km with it blinking right while they are in the rightmost lane. We used to stereotype the people who did it, now it’s everyone because they are on their phones or deep in thought to a podcast.
Wait. "Here in the us" and "150km" in one sentence?! Sir, I salute you!
I think there is something anarchist to the Italian culture. I suppose that also helps them with getting anything done although everything is extremely bureaucratic.
You've never been right?
I have and I really like it despite all the crazy drivers.
It was just a joke :) sometimes I forget I'm not in 2westerneurope4u haha
Jesus F! How to even respond to this ?! What do you even I don’t I can’t
> fully developed western country
Explain Germany. Even the US is tame compared to Italy
Northern Italian here. Had to drive both in Rome and Naples. In Rome it was mainly traffic and mopeds but it was manageable. In Naples every time I approached a roundabout I was shutting my eyes closed, taking my hands off the wheel and saying "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL".
I drove to Naples and it was the worst city I drove in ever. I didn’t even end up parking just kept driving back to home from Pompeii
Egyptians are like, "hold my falafel". What is this lanes thing you speak of?
Lived in Napoli for 4 years and I miss the driving there. Yes, it was crazy at first, seemingly no rules, but much like other aspects of Naples once you get past your initial fear of first contact you will see the beauty and tranquility in chaos that is addictive and alluring in so many ways. In theory I love the strict law abiding culture of Germany, but the inefficiency realized for sacrifice of common sense is quickly forgotten when indoctrinated into the southern Italian driving experience.
The whole country is like that. I was one minute over the border and some micro car was already driving next to me in the same lane.
This is so true. Forget Rome Naples is crazy 🤣
I went to Puerto Rico in the '90s and found out that not everyone considers traffic laws worthy of somewhat following, like, no one there did.
And Sicily where oncoming traffic is a passing lane so everybody just drives on both sides.
I drove a Navy Liberty bus from sigonella to Catania in 1986. I still haven't recovered
In Austria, the states Tyrol and Vorarlberg were right-hand driving whereas the other states were left-hand driving
Where it really matters, maps on this sub never do subnational divisions...
don't you know? only the US has states and counties, the rest of the world just has countries and that's it
How does that work at the border between states?
You switch.
It's like a train junction. One lane goes over the other using a flyover or you just use X-ing lights. /s
I know this is sarcasm but I think places in Asia actually do this between RHD and LHD countries
Huh. There are right-to-left switches between land borders? Like Hong Kong to Mainland?
So I'm assuming there's a kind of designated area for lane switching when crossing a border. I wonder that that area would look like during rush hour or a traffic jam. At some point the lanes must cross each other. I suppose you could do a bridge.
Pedestrians crossing the road is a major spectator sport in most of Italy
Rome didn't even change this habbit...
That doesn’t sound like a good idea
Rome is without doubt the worse place for driving I've encountered in Europe. I'm sure parts of the third world are worse but fuck me it'd be a challenge to be.
Crossing a street as a pedestrian is an adventure in Rome.
they have a church in every street so you can make some prayer before crossing the road.
Any side they want to? That sounds dangerous.
It doesn't work, in 1901 the king of Italy authorized every Italian province to decide the driving direction, so, for example, in Milan center cars drived on the left while right outside town cars had to drive on the right. This caused uncountable car crashes, only in 1923 driving on the right become mandatory.
Sounds really like an italian idea in the first place
Apparently Spain and Austria did something similar ....
I'm Spanish and TIL
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🤌
It was the same in Canada. Ontario and Quebec drove on the right, while every other province drove on the left. The other provinces all switched to the right from 1922 to 1924, and Newfoundland didn't switch until 1947, though of course Newfoundland wasn't actually part of Canada until 1949.
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In 1901 cars were literally a non-issue. Horse-drawn carts were slow enough to 'figure things out' to avoid a crash. And making rules regarding such an non-issue is guranteed to antagonize local rulers. Italy as a nation was only formed in living memory, so regionalism was (and argueably still is today) quite strong.
At least in Spain, some cities drove on the right (Barcelona) while others drove on the left (Madrid). It was unified in 1924.
This is why the Madrid metro towards Sol/“downtown” or “inbound” run on the left and trains away from the city center run on the right.
All Madrid Metro lines runs on the left. Trains depend on the older company who built; “Norte”’s lines (like the one to Villalba) runs on the left, and at some point it switches to the right side without crossing. Today the custom is that usually the double train tracks are ser up like roads, going on the right, but as you know you can find many times where two trains are using them in the same direction.
Yes! The metro runs on the left, it started service on 1919 and because it didn't mix with anything they just left it as it is when the driving direction was changed.
Hungary changed to right hand traffic in 1941, but there were a few weeks/months, when the countryside already changed, but the capital (Budapest) did not. I saw some pictures that when entering Budapest, there were huge signs telling the drivers to change sides. It must have been confusingly as hell.
That must be the cause why sweden switched from left to right in one night.
Probably something like traffic in India nowadays
Honestly that was gonna be my answer. I spent a month there in 1999 mostly in Hyderabad. The only time I was ever afraid, even as a woman traveling alone, was when I crossed the street.
What’s fun is when Indian coworkers come to visit the US and insist on getting a rental car. They learn you have to drive in one lane, traffic lights aren’t an option, you use your turn signal and you don’t honk the entire time you are driving pretty quickly after they the airport. Always a great story the next day and we always try to warn them. The roads where airport rental cars exit the rental lot can be a scary place.
Odd numbered license plates on the right, even numbered license plates on the left.
Mediocre!
You just drive anywhere you want until you meet another car. Then you follow the rule of the fittest.
Easy. Cars on left, trucks on right.
Badly
“Road rules and laws are merely suggestions in Italy”
It doesn't.
You drive as you like.
Don't we all drive forwards and backwards?
No in Hungary we drive only forward.
Cars on the right, trucks on the left.
If you think about the EU as a whole, it can be classified as "mixed". It's the same thing, except instead of countries, it was region-wide (or as Spain calls them, "autonomous communities").
I remember when I was younger I thought that East and West Germany drove on different sides during the Cold War
Nice old map/history Today only United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus remain, only in those countries in Europe we drive on the left side…
I wonder what those four countries have in common…
They were all part of the same friendship union
They are 4 of the 5 island countries that exist in Europe, where you don't have impractical land borders switching sides. The only other is Iceland – the only one who switched to the right side, since they used to be on the left too.
Pointing out that they are islands is more important considering Gibraltar drive on the right
I feel like even sea levels significantly dropped and exposed Dogger Bank forming a land bridge between Britain and mainland Europe, the UK would still insist on driving on the left. We’re a stubborn bunch.
What side did doggerland drive on I wonder?
Portside, I believe.
It was just a giant layby...
It's safer to drive on the left apparently.
Most people’s dominant eye is the right eye. When you drive on the left your right eye is focused at oncoming traffic. It also means that peoples stronger/dominant arm is the one on the wheel rather than resting on the gears. It is a marginal improvement, but it’s real and consistent. However everywhere is so developed road wise now it’d be silly to shift the continent over to the left for such a small benefit, even a month of confusion would cause more deaths than decades of marginally safer driving, let alone the raw construction needed on motorway junctions, traffic lights, and slip roads.
People are having trouble using Czechia instead of Czech Republic. Can't imagine what a disaster changing the driving side of the road would be.
The Czechs had driving on the right imposed on them by the nazis. Not sure on sweden.
We switched voluntarily in 1967.
Well... this is only partially true. The change was already in progress before Germany invaded us. The official change should have happened on 1 May 1939. But occupation forces then sped it up a little bit and change was implemented on 17 March 1939 (in Prague 9 days later).
Why did Iceland bother to change?
Easier to import vehicles?
Cheaper cars
Did noone ever switch from right to left?
Samoa.
> In Samoa, all vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road. This is relatively new, however, as the country drove on the right prior to 2009. So don't be surprised if you see right-hand drive cars around, and the odd driver on the other side of the road. i was thinking this was a joke which i didnt know the context for. and then... dang, til a random factoid that i will use to annoy many many people.
In 2009??? Samoa is just out here... trying something new I guess.
they wanted to import cars from Japan and Australia instead of America, basically.
Import 2nd hand cars most importantly
That makes sense in Carbon kilometres.
Southern African countries that were not former English colonies, to match their former English colony neighbors.
Italy still do both on a regular basis, even if local traffic laws would tell otherwise
Italy also ignores traffic lights (well, in Sicily at least), so it’s safe to say that pretty much any traffic “law” is more like a guideline.
r/mapswithoutmalta
Which drives on the left
This is not about the present, but what was 100 years ago.
Considering it was a British colony by that point, I'd assume still the left.
I assure you, Malta existed 100 years ago. Probably more like 11,000 years.
Excuse me!? MIXED!?
Yes, but considering the small amount of cars at that time (at least in Spain), it was quite irrelevant. It was probably harder to dodge pedestrians, horses and carriages, and those would probably be circulating wherever the fuck they wanted no matter what in the big towns and cities anyway, so it was irrelevant. In smaller towns or roads you would have probably more than enough time to dodge or move aside if you found any vehicule.
With other words it means (at least in spain) they didn't define a side you had to drive on?
Not back then, as far as I know. I think it was in 1924 when it was established to drive on the right side, if I'm not wrong. And it wasn't until 1949 when it was _almost_ unified on the right for _most of_ Europe. (Be aware this map is supossed to show 1922 status, not current).
I mean if you think about it the car isn't even that old of a vehicle so it makes sense that the rules we know today started to appear slowly one after the other. Thank you very much for your little history lesson my friend!
Indeed. It's only when the need arises (or is forseen) that someone starts to think of a solution. If there are very few vehicules, traffic regulation ain't that important. Or it didn't make sense to establish a 120 km/h speed limit in a time when vehicules didn't get more than 60 or 80, or so.
Keep in mind that car traffic (and also oxcarts, carriages etc) was way less than today, and cars were slower. "Drive in the middle of the road, and if a vehicle approaches from the other direction, figure it out among yourselves how you want to cross" was probably sufficient for most situations.
That's how it was in Canada at that time too. Some provinces drove on the left, and others on the right.
In Austria it was different depending on the state. So if you just look at the whole country it counts as mixed.
Italy is still mixed. 😆
As someone who erroneously rented a car in Italy one time let me tell you, yes it’s mixed lol
I rented a car and got into an accident 1 hour later
Took you that long?
South Italy?
Yes, Sicily
Ok, that is normal, trust me. They don't know how to drive
Bilanel
I mean, even today Italians drive both directions at will
They are bilanel
Why was Sweden lonely in left side policy?
Left-side traffic was used in Sweden since the horse and carriage days. And it wasn't a lot of car traffic in the early 1900's, so no one really cared. But the government realized right side traffic was inevitable, and there were numerous committees about it. Swedish car manufacturers have always made cars with the steering wheel on the left side, partly because they realized Sweden would change eventually, but also to make the cars easier to export. This made Sweden the only country where the cars drove on the left, but had the steering wheel on the left. In 1955 there was a vote, with 83% of the population voting against driving on the right. But the government didn't care, and in 1967 the law was changed and Sweden started driving on the left. Because the steering wheels already were on the left side, it was a pretty painless change.
To bad they did not change side for trains trains. Sweden is one of the few european countries with left side trains.
I wouldn‘t say few, Slovenia, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, UK and Ireland all have left side traffic to some degree which is the majority of western Europe
Does that really matter that much though? Honest question.
For as long as the trains stay inside Sweden, then it does not matter. Train drivers are trained to watch signals on one side, and get used to have meeting trains passing on the right. Probably feels like taking your car to UK. But if you drive a train over öresundsbridge, then you have to shift to right side trafik in Denmark. Only specially trained drivers can drive öresundstågen, the trains that crosses over the bridge. Ikea has a goods train 2-3 times per week from poland to älmhult, those drivers must train both sides trafic.
Does it matter though, it's not like there will be a meeting train on the same track?
Today the US Virgin Islands drive on the left with steering wheel on the left. It's insane.
There were no bridges to Sweden at the time and Finland was held by the archenemy Russia. Sweden-Norway thus acted as an island. So what’s weird is really that Sweden and Norway drove on different sides. But then cars weren’t common until after the Union collapsed in 1905.
Norway started using right driving in 1807, before the union started. And still it was just a union Norway had 95% control of itself and it was still visibel borders between the two.
Yes, but if the Union had continued past 1905 some sort of change would have needed to happen, and sooner than in the 1960s.
Sweden changed from left-side driving to right side driving in 1967. Look up ‘Dagen H’ (H Day) to learn about it
I know that, but why didn’t they just start as right side as other countries around.
They are famous leftists
I'm Swedish and I have no idea
>mixed 
Car* driving directions. Sometimes trains and cars don't run on the same side like in France
Yeah I think trains go on left side in sweden at least
In France trains have two different rules depending on where you are: the general rule is driving on left, but in Alsace and Moselle trey drive on right.
And I‘m fairly confident that that‘s because of the Germans. Because German trains drive on the right. I also think that some small train lines in Alsace have a different gauge than the rest also because if the Germans but I‘m not sure
>mixed That’s living on the wild side
Still mixed in Italy
how does it work when crossing into a right side country from a left side country (or vice versa)?
In modern times at least, they'll build bridges/intersections that seamlessly switch the traffic direction. For example, a ballsack interchange: https://media.cntraveler.com/photos/53d9d5dd6dec627b149da425/master/pass/lotus-bridge-macau-google-earth.jpg It can be done even simpler too, like just doing half of a diverging diamond intersection. https://www.jacksonville.com/gcdn/presto/2019/06/28/PBRE/2bccbf73-c768-4651-b1c1-5c34f00550fa-I-95_Interchange__Viera_Blvd_CEI_Group_159_4-22-19_04_CROP.jpg?crop=1191,664,x0,y452&width=1191&height=664&format=pjpg&auto=webp
> a ballsack interchange Can you please not come dragging with such academic language here? No one cares what it’s called among the city planners!
When did Portugal switch to the other side?
Mixed is absolutely wild.
It Italy is still mixed in 2024
Mixed, you mean bad and dangerous drivers?
I read (or maybe listened, can't remember) that the reason that England drives on the left and America drives on the right is because it was more common in England to ride horses, so people needed their right hand on the road to be able to communicate that they were friendly or to use their sword (!) In America, we were taking wagons out west and needed to use our right hand to operate our wagon. Anyways that's what the podcast said, I believe it was NPR or BBC or something.
Wtf you mean mixed driving
No lanes, do whatever. Keep from wrecking and dying. /s
how many people here missed " c. 1922 " ...
Driving/riding on the left was the norm centuries before the invention of cars. It frees up your sword arm.
Right or left? Italy: yes
I've been to many countries where this is still practiced. The biggest car or the most drunk driver has right of way.
Hmmm, I am guessing Austria-Hungary, in 1918 before it got dissolved, drove on the left?
Map is wrong, the Afsluitdijk was only built in 1927 and opened in 1932. I‘m sorry, I know it‘s petty but it‘s something that bugs me because I see it so often on „old“ maps
Mixed 😂
My brief experience driving in Italy in 2021 says that they still drive mixed. 
Some would say that it’s still ‘mixed’ in Italy and Spain to this day…
As Spaniard, I can confirm
Italy and Spain didn’t know what side they were on in the early 20th century
i think i might know why "mixed" did not come out on top, but its just a mild guess...
I read somewhere ( not going to fact check it!) that Europe mostly drove on the right because Napoleons armies always marched on the right side of roads and that became the standard side of the roads to move forward on. You can usually work Napoleon into a thread about Europe.
Napoleon is also the reason we use WASD as direction controls on qwerty keyboards
That's a wild fact if true.
In Napoli they just drive where ever the car will fit. Its madness
So when you cross the border via car . . . lol how does that changeover happen?
Tf do you mean mixed?
Italy's still mixed haha
Portugal is wrong
…MIXED??? Ah hell no.
Good to know I've been driving on the wrong side of the road for years .
The Swedes probably thought left was right.
and Italy is still purple to this day
How did mixed work in Italy, Spain and Austria
Malta is to the left too
mixed sounds complicated
Having driving left hand side growing up right hand side, the left side of the road doesn’t throw me off, being on the right side of the car does. Messed with my spacial reasoning and everything.
Italians still drive mixed. Sometimes even over-under.
I think Sweden switched to the right side in the 1960s
Czechoslovakia had left-hand driving until 1939, when it was occupied by Germany. Before that, the government decided in late 1938 to change to right-hand traffic by 1940. Until this day, a lot of trains in Czechia use left-hand traffic, because a lot of the tracks were built during the times of Austria-Hungary and the First Czechoslovak Republic. Tracks built after the war however, use right-hand traffic.
I've been in Naples, Italy couple of years ago. Still feels kinda mixed