When Sweden’s roads went right

In September 1967, all Swedish traffic had to change the habit of decades and swap to driving on the right-hand side of the road.It brought them into line with most of the rest of Europe except for Britain and Ireland but caused a day of chaos. In 2016, Ashley Byrne spoke to Bjorn Sylven who remembered that day.A Made in Manchester production for BBC World Service. (Photo: First day of driving on the right-hand side in Stockholm. Credit: Keystone-France/Gemma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Om Podcasten

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.