A 'thrilling' mission to get the Swedish to change overnight
一夜之间改变瑞典人的"惊险"任务

“Thrilling” is the word repeatedly used by Jan Ramqvist to describe how he felt about participating in a nationwide mission to get all Swedish motorists and cyclists to change the habits of a lifetime and begin driving on the right-hand side of the road for the first time.

拉姆奎斯特（Jan Ramqvist）在形容他参加的一个全国性任务时，反复用到“惊险”一词。那个任务让所有瑞典司机和骑行者改变了一生的习惯，第一次开始靠右行驶。

“Everyone was talking about it, but we really didn’t know how it would work out,” explains the 77-year-old, who was just 26 and a newly qualified traffic engineer working in the city of Malmö when the potentially catastrophic changeover took place on 3 September 1967.

“大家对此议论纷纷，但我们真的不知道要怎么来实现，”77岁的拉姆奎斯特说。那场可能引发灾难的转变发生在1967年9月3日，当时他只有26岁，是马尔默市（Malmö）的一名新晋交通工程师。

The day was officially known as Högertrafikomläggningen (right-hand traffic diversion) or simply Dagen H (H-Day). Its mission was to put Sweden on the same path as the rest of its continental European neighbours, most of which had long followed the global trend to drive cars on the right.

这一天的正式名称是Hogertrafikomlaggningen（靠右行驶转换），或者简称为H日（Dagen H）。此举是为了让瑞典在马路上与其他欧洲大陆邻国相同。多数欧洲国家一直遵循全球趋势，汽车靠右行驶。

As well as hoping to boost the country’s international reputation, the Swedish government had grown increasingly concerned about safety, with the number of registered vehicles on the roads shooting up from 862,992 a decade earlier to a figure of 1,976,248 recorded by Statistics Sweden at the time of H-Day. Sweden’s population was around 7.8 million.

除了希望提升千亿国际娱乐声誉，瑞典政府也越来越关注安全问题。上路行驶的登记车辆从10年前的86万2992辆，迅速升至瑞典统计局在H日时期录得的197万6248辆。瑞典当时的人口在780万左右。

Despite driving on the left, many Swedes already owned cars with the steering wheel on the left-hand side of the vehicle, since many bought from abroad and major Swedish car manufacturers such as Volvo had chosen to follow the trend. However, there were concerns that this was a factor in rising numbers of fatal road traffic accidents, up from 595 in 1950 to 1,313 in 1966, alongside an increased frequency of collisions around Sweden’s borders with Denmark, Norway and Finland.

尽管靠左行驶，许多瑞典人开的都是方向盘在左侧的汽车，因为许多人从国外买车，沃尔沃等主要的瑞典车企也选择了追随这个趋势。然而，有人担心这是导致道路交通事故中死亡人数上升的一个因素——从1950年的595宗升至1966年的1313宗，在瑞典与丹麦、挪威和芬兰边境附近的撞车事故也在增加。

“The market for cars in Sweden was not so big and so we tended to buy left-driven cars,” explains Lars Magnusson, a professor in economic history at Uppsala University. “But that meant that you would be sitting on the opposite side to what made sense… and you were looking down into the ditch!”

“瑞典的汽车市场当时并没有那么大，所以我们往往都是买左边驾驶的车，”乌普萨拉大学（Uppsala University）经济史教授马格努松（Lars Magnusson）解释。“但那意味着开车的时候你要坐在相反的一边才对劲……分分钟把车开到沟里！”

‘Incredibly hard’

“异常艰难”

In the run-up to H-Day, each local municipality had to deal with issues ranging from repainting road markings to relocating bus stops and traffic lights, and redesigning intersections, bicycle lanes and one-way streets.

在H日之前的准备阶段，每个地方政府都有成堆的问题需要处理，要重新粉刷道路标记，重新安置公交车站和交通灯，重新设计十字路口、自行车道和单向街道。

Several cities including Stockholm, Malmö and Helsingborg also used the change to implement more wide-ranging transport changes, such as closing tram lines to allow for more bus routes. Hundreds of new buses were purchased by municipalities around the country, and around 8,000 older buses were reconfigured to provide doors on both sides. The total cost of amending public transportation came in at 301,457,972 Swedish kronor.

包括斯德哥尔摩、马尔默和赫尔辛堡在内的几座城市，也利用这个机会实施更大的交通变革，比如停运有轨电车，为更多的公交路线腾出空间。各地城市购买了成百上千辆的新公交车，并且改造了大约8000辆现有公交车，让人可以从两侧上落。公交系统的整体改装费用为3亿零145万7972瑞典克朗。

Some 360,000 street signs had to be switched nationwide, which largely took place on a single day before the move to right-hand driving, with council workers joined by the military and working late into the night to ensure the task got done before H-Day formally revved into gear on Sunday morning. All but essential traffic was banned from the roads.

瑞典全国有大约36万个路牌需要更换，其中大部分都需要在转为靠右行驶的前一天完成。部队军人也加入到市政工人当中，一起工作到深夜，确保H日在周日一大早正式启动前完成任务。除非必要，所有车辆都禁止上路。

“I worked incredibly hard on the night itself,” remembers Ramqvist, who shared the responsibility for ensuring around 3,000 signs in Malmö were moved correctly.

“那天晚上我非常卖力地工作，”拉姆奎斯特回忆。他跟别人一起负责确保把马尔默的大约3000个路标挪到正确的位置。

“My boss was very proud because we were one of the first (municipalities) to ring Stockholm and tell the head of the commission that we were finished,” he says, recalling a charged and celebratory atmosphere. “We found ourselves eating cake and drinking coffee in the middle of the night!”

“我老板非常自豪，因为我们是最早一批打电话到斯德哥尔摩的地方城市，告诉委员会的头我们已经干完了，”他边说，边回忆当时紧张、喜庆的气氛。“我们在半夜吃着蛋糕、喝着咖啡庆祝！”

Others remember the stress of the project more vividly.

对于这个项目所造成的压力，其他人记忆犹新。

“The most challenging thing was the shortage of time, no vacation at all, too many hours a day for months, I almost killed myself,” says Arthur Olin, now 82, who was working as a traffic consultant in the city of Helsingborg and says he spent a full year knee-deep in logistical planning.

“最大的挑战是时间紧，完全不能休假，每天工作好长时间，连续好多个月，我快忙死了，”现年82岁的奥林（Arthur Olin）说，他当时是赫尔辛堡的交通顾问，整整一年都忙于工作规划。

The stress caused him to “hit the wall” a year later. “I had to go to Africa for two weeks just to cut all connections to the job – doctor’s sharp instructions!”

一年后，压力令他“难以为继”。“我必须去非洲呆两周，只为了切断跟工作有关的一切联系——这是医生的严厉指示！”

A new era

一个新时代

But as Dagen H finally dawned, the hard work all appeared to pay off. Swedes began cautiously driving on the right-hand side of roads around the country at precisely 5am on 3 September 1967, following a radio countdown.

但是，当H日的曙光初现，辛苦的工作似乎都得到了回报。1967年9月3日凌晨5点，在全国各地的道路上，瑞典人开始小心翼翼地靠右侧行驶。

Olof Palme, the Swedish Minister of Communication (who later became Prime Minister), went on air to say that the move represented “a very large change in our daily existence, our everyday life”.

瑞典当时的交通部长帕尔梅（Olof Palme，后来成为首相）在广播中说，这个转变代表了“我们日常生活的巨大变化”。

“I dare say that never before has a country invested so much personal labour, and money, to achieve uniform international traffic rules,” he announced.

他宣布：“我敢说，以前还从来没有一个国家为了与千亿国际娱乐交规接轨，投入如此多的劳力和资金。”

In total, the project cost 628 million kronor, just 5% over the government’s estimated budget two years earlier, and the equivalent of around 2.6 billion kronor ($316m) today.

该项目总耗资6.28亿瑞典克朗，仅比两年前政府估计的预算高出5%，相当于今天约26亿克朗（约合3.16亿美元）。

But economic historian Lars Magnusson argues that this figure is actually relatively small, given the scale of the plan, which was the biggest infrastructure project Sweden had ever seen.

不过，经济史专家马格努松（Lars Magnusson)认为，考虑到该项目的规模，这个数字不算大，这是瑞典有史以来最大的基础设施项目。

As a point of comparison, he refers to the total 2017 budget given to the Swedish Transport Administration (the government agency responsible for transport planning) for roads and railways – some 25 billion kronor ($2.97bn).

马格努松作了个比较，管公路和铁路的瑞典交通运输管理局（负责运输规划的政府机构）2017年获得的总预算约为250亿瑞典克朗（约合29.7亿美元）。

“[Dagen H] was a fairly cheap transfer in a sense – it was not a very big sum even at that time,” he explains.

他解释：“从某种意义上说，（H日）是一个相当便宜的转变，即使是在那个时候，这也不是一笔大数目。”

This, he says, was partly due Swedish officials living up to their global reputation for efficiency and careful planning, alongside the logistics of the era.

马格努松说，在一定程度上，这个便宜价格在于瑞典官员没有辜负他们在完成效率和精心规划方面的全球声誉，而且，当年的规划工作也做得好。

“The road system was not so developed as it is today and so the costs in infrastructure were not extremely high and it was also because we already had the left-hand drive cars.”

“当时的公路系统也不像今天这样发达，所以基础设施的成本并不高，而且我们已经在开左边驾驶的汽车了。”

Crisis averted

危机解除

In safety terms, the project was declared a success almost immediately. As Swedes began their working week on the day after H-Day, 157 minor traffic accidents were reported around the country, slightly less than average for a typical Monday. Nobody died.

从安全的角度说，几乎立刻就宣布，这个项目取得了成功。瑞典人在H日之后的第二天开始了新的工作周，全国各地在那天报告了157起轻微交通事故，略低于一般周一的平均值。那天没有人死于交通事故。

Peter Kronborg, a Stockholm-based traffic consultant and author of a book about Dagen H, Håll dig till höger Svensson (Keep to the right, Svensson), was 10 years old on the day of the switch and recalls excitedly riding his bicycle on the right-hand side of the road for the first time, as well as a buzz around global media gathering in the Swedish capital to report on the day’s events.

斯德哥尔摩的交通顾问克龙堡（Peter Kronborg）写过一本关于H日的书《靠右行驶，斯文松》（Keep to the right, Svensson）。在转换车道那一天他10岁，他兴奋地回忆起自己首次在马路上靠右骑自行车的情形，以及全球媒体聚集瑞典首都，报道当天的盛况。

“It was the most important thing to happen in Sweden in 1967,” he says. “The journalists – especially the guys from BBC – they were waiting for this bloodbath – a huge number of accidents. They were a little disappointed. At least that’s what I read!”

“那是1967年瑞典发生的最重要的事，”他说。“媒体记者——尤其是BBC的人马，等着看一场大屠杀——等着大量的交通事故出现。他们有点失望。至少我是这么看的！”

A total of 1,077 people died and 21,001 were injured in 1967, the year of Dagen H, down from 1,313 and 23,618 respectively in 1965, which was largely considered to be a result of the extra caution taken by Swedes as a result of the switchover and the state’s nationwide campaign. It took another three years before accident and fatality rates returned to their original levels, during which time car ownership continued to increase rapidly across the country.

1967年，也就是H日那一年，全瑞典共有1077人死于交通事故，21001人受伤，而在1965年分别是1313人和23618人。这两个数字之所以下降，在很大程度上是因为在转换车道后，瑞典人开车时加倍小心，而且全国开展了宣传活动。又过了三年，事故和死亡率才恢复到之前的水平，但在此期间，全国范围内的汽车持有量持续快速增长。

Driving school

前期驾驶教育

The investment in the planning and logistics needed to prepare the roads clearly helped to avoid confusion among drivers. But a large part of the government’s budget for Dagen H was also spent on communication initiatives designed to educate the Swedish public and get them behind the change. On paper, it didn’t look easy: in a public referendum in 1955, 83% of voters had actually been against the switch.

道路上的准备工作需要进行合理的规划和组织安排，这显然有助于司机避免出现混淆。但是，政府H日预算中很大一部分都花在了教育瑞典公众上，促使他们支持这个转变。统计数字告诉我们，这个转变来之不易：在1955年的一次全民公投中，83%的投票者其实是反对这个转变的。

The information campaign – costing around 43 million kronor (out of the total 628,349,774 kronor spent) – included television, radio and newspaper advertisements, and talks in schools. Dagen H had its own logo, emblazoned on billboards, buses and milk cartons.

耗资4300万克朗（总开销为6亿2834万9774克朗）的宣传战包括在电视、电台和报纸上投放广告，以及在学校进行宣讲。H日有自己的标识，它出现在广告牌、公汽和牛奶包装盒上。

There was even a song contest to select a theme tune to accompany the switch, with the track Håll dig till höger Svensson (the title of Peter Kronborg’s book) selected in a national vote and reaching number five on the Swedish hit parade. Meanwhile public service television booked global celebrities to appear on its most popular television shows, designed to attract large audiences who would be informed about the Dagen H during the same programmes.

瑞典甚至还为此举办了一场歌曲大赛，选出转换车道项目的主题歌，通过全国投票，一首名叫《靠右行驶，斯文松》的歌胜出（克龙堡的书名正是来自这首歌），它还登上了瑞典流行歌曲排行榜第五名。与此同时，公共电视台还请来全球名人参加其最受欢迎的节目，旨在吸引大批观众，然后借机宣传H日。

“The politicians realised that it wasn’t enough to have an information programme, they needed a propaganda campaign!” laughs Kronborg. “The ambition was not to reach 99% of everyone but to reach 100%.”

“政客们意识到，仅仅一个信息节目是不够的，他们需要来一场宣传战！”克龙堡笑道。“目标不是传达给99%的人，而是100%的人。”

Meanwhile Lars Magnusson adds that a more general “culture of conformism” and trust in authorities prevalent in Sweden at the time helped enable the shift in public opinion.

马格努松补充说，当时的瑞典盛行“墨守成规的文化”和对权威的信任，也有助于公共舆论的转变。

“The media was at that time less critical and they were reporting what the experts told them and if the experts said that this would not be very costly and it would benefit everybody, well, the media would accept that and I suppose the public would accept it as well.”

“那时的媒体没有现在那么爱批评，他们报道专家告诉他们的事情，如果专家说不会很贵，而且会让所有人受益，媒体就会接受，我想公众也会接受。”

Magnusson believes that as well as being important for Sweden’s global reputation, when viewed as part of the Nordic nation’s wider efforts to be seen as a major player in Europe, the switch might potentially also have had other longer-term costs and benefits such as increased trade and transportation from other parts of the continent. However, this broader economic impact is, he argues “difficult to estimate” since the changeover occurred “during a period where the economy was growing a lot - and GDP - each year, so it is difficult to distinguish the possible benefits on trade and transport”.

马格努松认为，除了对瑞典的全球声誉很重要以外，既然这个转变被看作是这个北欧国家为了成为欧洲主要参与者而做出的更广泛的努力，可能还具有其他的长期成本及好处，比如来自欧洲大陆其他地区的贸易和运输的增加。然而，他认为，更广泛的经济影响是“很难估计的”，因为这种转变发生在“经济和GDP每年都在快速增长的时期，所以很难区分贸易和交通可能带来的好处”。

Future lessons

未来的教训

So could Sweden pull off anything like Dagen H today?

那么，今天的瑞典还能够实现像H日那样颠覆的事情吗?

Recently ranked top in Europe in Bloomberg’s global innovation ranking, with a transport infrastructure quality above the EU average and one of the region’s strongest digital economies, the Nordic nation would certainly have a head start should it decide to embark on a similarly disruptive transportation project.

不久前，在彭博的全球创新排名中，瑞典在欧洲排名第一，交通基础设施质量高于欧盟平均水平，也是该地区最强大的数字经济体之一。如果这个北欧国家决定启动一个类似的颠覆性交通项目，毫无疑问已经占得先机。

But the prevailing sentiment among those who’ve studied Dagen H closely is that today’s political, economic and media climates would present numerous fresh challenges to those that existed at the time Dagen H.

但是，那些对H日进行过仔细研究的人普遍认为，与当年相比，今天的政治、经济和媒体环境将带来许多新的挑战。

Peter Kronborg’s key argument is that ministers and public authorities would struggle to shift public opinion and shape a new consensus so dramatically. He says that “everything about Swedish society became a little more individualistic” just a year after Dagen H, in the wake of student radicalism and counter-culturism across Europe, and he believes that today the Swedish public would be outraged if politicians went ahead with a project so vehemently opposed in a referendum.

克龙堡的主要观点是，瑞典部长和公共机构将很难改变公众舆论，并且非常戏剧性地达成新的共识。他说，就在H日一年之后，随着学生激进主义和反文化主义横扫欧洲，“瑞典社会的方方面面都变得有点更加个人主义了”，他认为，今天的政客若是无视公投的激烈反对而执意推进一个项目，将会引发瑞典民众的愤怒。

Meanwhile he suggests our current media diet of YouTube and Netflix amid the demise of “prime time television” would make it “much more complicated” for politicians and campaigners to reach the entire population, whereas at the time of Dagen H there was only one television channel and one radio channel and “everybody watched and listened to them”.

同时，克龙堡也提出，“黄金时段的电视”已经消亡，YouTube和Netflix构成的当下媒体膳食，使得政客和活动家要想触及整个人口变得“复杂得多”，而在H日时代，只有一个电视频道和一个广播频道，“大家听的看的都一样”。

From an economic perspective, Lars Magnusson estimates that the financial cost of implementing Dagen H today would be greatly increased due to Sweden’s road networks and infrastructure being “much more developed” than 50 years ago.

从经济角度说，马格努松估计，由于瑞典的道路网和基础设施比50年前“发达得多”，今天实施H日的财务成本将大为增加。

“It’s difficult to give an exact estimate, but I would say it would go up at least 10 times. This is my guess,” he says.

“很难给出准确的估计，但至少增加10倍。这是我的推测，”他说。

Even Sweden’s current transportation strategists are sceptical that an equivalent to Dagen H could be implemented anywhere near as smoothly today as it was in 1967.

即使是瑞典现在的运输战略家也怀疑，在今天任何地方要实现一个像H日那样的项目都不可能像1967年那样顺利。

“My personal belief is that it would be very difficult,” says Mattias Lundberg, head of traffic planning for the city of Stockholm.

“我个人认为非常困难，”斯德哥尔摩交通规划负责人伦德贝里（Mattias Lundberg）说。

“In those days, a few – normally men – could really gain a lot of power in order to influence things on a very broad scale. Today society is so much more diverse.”

“当年，只有少数人，通常是男性，才可以获得许多权利，从而在大范围内产生影响力。今天的社会则更为多元。”

But he notes that Dagen H is a monumental event which is still occasionally talked about in his office and that it helped to encourage an ongoing focus on road safety in both public and political discourse.

但他也指出，H日是一个里程碑式的事件。他的同事偶尔还会提及，这件事有助于鼓励人们在公共和政治话语中持续关注道路安全问题。

In 1997 Sweden started what became a multinational project to work towards no fatalities on public highways, known as Vision Zero. The country currently has one of the world’s lowest road death rates. 270 people died in 2016, compared to 1,313 in 1966, the year before Dagen H.

1997年，瑞典开始推动实现公共道路零死亡，即零死亡愿景（Vision Zero），后来成为了一个跨国项目。瑞典是目前世界上拥有最低道路死亡率的一个国家。2016年的死亡人数是270人，而1966年，也就是H日前一年，死亡人数是1313人。

Yet these days a large proportion of the work done by Lundberg’s team is about planning for a future where far fewer Swedes get behind the wheel at all.

不过，伦德贝里的团队主要在做关于未来的规划，届时，开车的瑞典人会越来越少。

The Swedish capital’s current strategy has a sustainability focus that prioritises walking, cycling and public transportation. The nation’s first self-driving buses launched in Stockholm in January and officials are also looking at what will perhaps be the most major shift in travel since Dagen H: the arrival of autonomous cars.

瑞典首都目前采取的战略以可持续性为重点，优先考虑步行、自行车和公共交通。今年1月，该国首批无人驾驶公共汽车在斯德哥尔摩上路，政府官员也在关注这个可能是自H日以来最大的出行转变：无人驾驶汽车的到来。

Lundberg argues that any dramatic changes are still “quite a long time away” though and – unlike Dagen H – they will most definitely follow a period of heavy public consultation.

伦德贝里认为，距离出现任何重大转变仍有"相当长的一段时间"，与当年的H日不同的是，政府肯定会在一段时间内大量咨询公众意见。