RE: PH Origins: Automatic transmissions

[aeropilot]

unsprung said:

Dale487 said:

Because their 3% is a large enough minority to pay attention to (c10 million people)

And yet the population of the EU is larger than that of the US.

On a related note...

I read once that the Attlee government, in the late 1940s, commissioned a plan to switch the UK from keep-left to keep-right (ie: shift to LHD). With low levels of car ownership and none of the sophisticated motorways of today, such a switch would have been not too difficult.

The contemporaneous government in Australia, IIRC, commissioned the same planning. Both plans were shelved.

All these years later, it's interesting to consider what might have been in terms of product cost, product choice, market liquidity.

Sweden made the switch over from left to right as late as 1967, as by then they were starting to tarmac main roads out of the cities (largely still gravel roads back then) so made the switch before they passed the point where it would be too complicated and expensive.

[unsprung]

aeropilot said:

unsprung said:

Dale487 said:

Because their 3% is a large enough minority to pay attention to (c10 million people)

And yet the population of the EU is larger than that of the US.

On a related note...

I read once that the Attlee government, in the late 1940s, commissioned a plan to switch the UK from keep-left to keep-right (ie: shift to LHD). With low levels of car ownership and none of the sophisticated motorways of today, such a switch would have been not too difficult.

The contemporaneous government in Australia, IIRC, commissioned the same planning. Both plans were shelved.

All these years later, it's interesting to consider what might have been in terms of product cost, product choice, market liquidity.

Sweden made the switch over from left to right as late as 1967, as by then they were starting to tarmac main roads out of the cities (largely still gravel roads back then) so made the switch before they passed the point where it would be too complicated and expensive.

you're right

and, presumably, a change in the late 1940s or early 1950s would have been similarly "easier" for the UK and AUS

it's not wrong that the change was not made for those two countries; but it's interesting to consider what might have been