[alkonaut]

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.

[air7]

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]

> 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…)

[boxed]

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.

[throwaway290]

If you already drove cars where drivers sit left side as Wikipedia says, what exactly were those 85% thinking about? Clearly not road safety?

[occz]

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.

[alkonaut]

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.

[throwaway290]

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...

[nobodyandproud]

NIMBYism in a nutshell.

[nobodyandproud]

Downvoted, but the down-voters have’t given thought to how closely coorelated this is.

[throwaway290]

Maybe people just thought it's too far off topic + suddenly turning unrelated discussion into US politics...

[dagurp]

New York should show the same courage