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I’ve Looked at Life From Both Sides Now

Samoa switches over.

As sirens and church bells wailed across Samoa just before 6am on Monday, drivers obediently stopped their cars. Then, after instructions issued over the radio by the Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, they shifted to the other side of the road and ushered in history.

“After this announcement you will all be permitted to move to the other side of the road, to begin this new era in our history,” Mr Tuilaepa told his people, warning: “Don’t drive if you are sleepy, drunk or just had a fight with your wife.”

Sage advice for normal driving as well.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Traffic Culture, Traffic History, Traffic Laws, Traffic safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “I’ve Looked at Life From Both Sides Now”

  1. Dave in KY Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    I guess they don’t have a lot of treatments that are monodirectional. For example, you couldn’t just reverse the flow into some roundabouts - the diverter islands are designed assymmetrically with the national custom in mind.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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