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  • When it comes to car safety Sweden has a pretty good reputation.

  • And it's based in fact.

  • Sweden has one of the world's lowest rates of traffic fatalities - only 2.8 deaths for

  • every 100,000 people

  • Here's how.

  • As Swedish society became motorized fatalities quickly began to rise.

  • The number of deaths on the roads more than doubled between 1950 and 1970

  • One of the reasons was the majority of cars were left-hand drive imports being driven

  • on the left-hand side of the road.

  • It means the driver is closer to the curb and further away from the centre of the road,

  • which makes overtaking much harder, as the driver can't see around the car in front.

  • Something which makes head-on collisions much more likely.

  • But on September 3rd 1967 the Swedish Government made a big change in the name of safety.

  • "Sweden decides to switch from left to right!"

  • The country changed to driving on the right side of the road.

  • Its traffic infrastructure was completely revamped in just one day -

  • that included changing 360,000 road signs.

  • Understandably, safety was a huge focus.

  • The Government created a special team, the 'Rightlane Driving Commision'

  • to make sure the changeover went without incident.

  • Speed limits in urban areas were reduced.

  • Outside of towns they were introduced where previously they hadn't existed.

  • 'H Day', forgertrafik, Swedish for 'right traffic' even had its very own song.

  • There were plenty of other every day reminders too like these helpful glasses or H-Day underwear.

  • The operation was deemed such a success, the government formed

  • The Swedish Road Safety Agency the very next year.

  • Some of the first things it achieved?

  • Lowering speed limits, and making seat belts and motorcycle helmets law.

  • Meanwhile, the country's biggest car maker, Volvo, invented the industry-changing

  • 3-point safety belt, giving up the patent so any automaker

  • could use it in their vehicles.

  • More than a million people worldwide are thought

  • to have been saved as a result.

  • Since the beginnings of the Swedish Road Safety Agency, fatalities dropped from 1307 in 1970

  • to 263 in 2015

  • What makes that even more astonishing is that in the same period the number of vehicles

  • on the roads more than doubled.

  • A lot of this is possible because Sweden is one of the wealthier countries in the world.

  • It's invested a lot of money in road infrastructure, separating cyclists and pedestrians from traffic

  • -- and strictly policing speed limits and drink driving.

  • In fact, the richer the country, the lower the number of fatalities generally.

  • The ultimate goal is 'Vision Zero' - where there aren't any deaths on Sweden's roads at all

  • For many countries there's still a trade-off between mobility and the deaths that come

  • as a result of it.

  • In Sweden, safety has been the priority over speed and convenience, since H-Day,

  • September 3rd 1967.

When it comes to car safety Sweden has a pretty good reputation.

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