Transport in Sweden - Road Traffic

Road Traffic

Sweden has right-hand traffic today like all its neighbours.

Sweden had left-hand traffic (Vänstertrafik in Swedish) from approximately 1736 and continued to do so until 1967. Despite this virtually all cars in Sweden were actually left-hand drive and the neighbouring Nordic countries already drove on the right, leading to mistakes by visitors. The Swedish voters rejected a change to driving on the right in a referendum held in 1955.

Nevertheless, in 1963 the Riksdag passed legislation ordering the switch to right-hand traffic. The changeover took place on a Sunday morning at 5am on September 3, 1967, which was known in Swedish as Dagen H (H-Day), the 'H' standing for Högertrafik or right-hand traffic.

Since Swedish cars were left-hand drive, experts had suggested that changing to driving on the right would reduce accidents, because drivers would have a better view of the road ahead. Indeed, fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents did drop sharply as a result. This was likely due to drivers initially being more careful and because of the initially very low speed limits, since accident rates soon returned to nearly the same as earlier.

Total roadways: 572,900 km, as of 2009.