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Speaker 1: And I got a de vita everybody, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the short Stuff. It's Josh and Chuck and there's Jerry

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Speaker 1: over there, uh somewhere out there in the ether, right,

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Speaker 1: I hope so, and this is this is stuff you

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Speaker 1: should know, short stuff. We should probably stop horsing around. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: I don't know why you said in a gotta DaVita.

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Speaker 1: I'm assume is that. No, I think it's a pig

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Speaker 1: Latin or gibberish. Oh really, yeah, it's in the garden

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Speaker 1: of Eden. But for some reason he said in a

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Speaker 1: gota devita? Why did you say it for this show?

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Speaker 1: It's just fun. It's a pleasant thing to hear. Don't

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Speaker 1: you think I thought it was an Easter egg? No? No,

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Speaker 1: and now it's just totally ruined. Well, we are talking

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Speaker 1: about a pretty interesting thing that you uh teased out

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Speaker 1: on an episode we did recently, and one that is

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Speaker 1: from an episode. Well it's not from an episode, but

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Speaker 1: there's all so visible episode about this there is if

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Speaker 1: you want to hear a better version in that way, right, Roman,

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Speaker 1: Roman has this beaten just about every way, but we'll

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Speaker 1: try our best. Right, So, what we're talking about today

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Speaker 1: is called dogging h and dogging h um is Swedish

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Speaker 1: for our day or right day h. The H stands

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Speaker 1: for hougar, which is um, the Swedish word for right.

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Speaker 1: And what the whole thing was really talking about was

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Speaker 1: something called man huger traffic calm log ningjin. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if nice is the right word, but sure, thank you,

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Speaker 1: And what that means is the right hand traffic diversion.

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Speaker 1: And ultimately, what all of this, all these words and

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Speaker 1: oom lots all piled together mean is that this is

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Speaker 1: the day dogging h September three, ninety seven when Sweden

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Speaker 1: said we're no longer driving on the left hand of

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Speaker 1: the road like we have been since seventeen thirty four,

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Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, on one day going to

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Speaker 1: switch over to the right hand side. That's right, And uh,

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Speaker 1: I think did you mention when they how long they

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Speaker 1: had been driving on the other side. Yes, it's seventeen

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Speaker 1: thirty four. It's a long time. So what you're having

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Speaker 1: to do is there's a couple of factors here. You've

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Speaker 1: got to teach people how to do this literally, so

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Speaker 1: they put together a pamphlet that literally told you how

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Speaker 1: to do it, and then you gotta it's an infrastructure

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Speaker 1: project supposedly the largest driving related infrastructure project ever undertaken

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Speaker 1: by any country. Oh really, I know. It's definitely Sweden's

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Speaker 1: largest infrastructure project to that day. It was the largest

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Speaker 1: for for any country as far as traffics are related,

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Speaker 1: largest traffic related infrastructure. Yes, what I just said protect Okay,

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Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe my ears chuck, but um, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, there's an infrastructure section of it, and then

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Speaker 1: there's the public information camp paint and it was a

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Speaker 1: lot more than just like a pamphlet. Pamphlets were stepped

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Speaker 1: like one dot you know, oh, we'll go with indicating

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Speaker 1: that there's plenty other steps. How about that? And one

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Speaker 1: some of the other things they did was, um, TV ads,

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Speaker 1: radio ads, newspaper ads. They came up with a logo

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Speaker 1: for dogging age that was everywhere. Um. They had a

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Speaker 1: a song contest to pick us a theme song for

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Speaker 1: dog and h and they came up with a good Boy.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you listened to it. Yeah, it was good

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Speaker 1: of you. Oh yeah. Uh. It was called well the

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Speaker 1: American translation is keep to the Rights Vincente and it

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Speaker 1: was by the Telestars and it was like you said,

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Speaker 1: selected by a vote. It actually reached number five on

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Speaker 1: their their charts, whatever the Swedish charts are. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: there was also a weird little sly side meeting because

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Speaker 1: apparently keeping it to the right means to be faithful

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Speaker 1: to your significant other as opposed to cheating on some

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Speaker 1: which is going left. Oh, I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, wow, chuck,

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Speaker 1: that's some. That's a deep cut right there. It's fairly deep.

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Speaker 1: So then the name of the song in Swedish is

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Speaker 1: hall dig Tail Hougar Svenson. And um. I listened to

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Speaker 1: it enough that I could have sung it, but enough

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Speaker 1: time is the lap? Since I've heard it's gone? Can

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Speaker 1: you say it would have been great? No? Do you

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Speaker 1: think we've talked about it enough to play it at

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Speaker 1: any point? Or do we have to just tell people

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Speaker 1: who go look it up on YouTube? Uh? No? I mean,

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Speaker 1: let's could we play like a version where we won't

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Speaker 1: get sued? Uh? I don't know. We'll find out in

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Speaker 1: the getit? How about that? All right? Well, let's play

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Speaker 1: a little part right now here is hall dig Tail

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Speaker 1: Huger Svenson by the Telestars. I'm not it's just bad

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Speaker 1: about it. Catch is is it gets I'm surprised it

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Speaker 1: only rose to number five on the Huge Parade. Yeah. Uh,

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Speaker 1: here's the thing with h Day though, Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: every municipality had to deal with their own issues. They

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Speaker 1: had to change. I mean, when you think about it,

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Speaker 1: it's not just about educating the public. That pamphlet. That

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Speaker 1: pamphlet I mentioned. Uh, I want to make it clear

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Speaker 1: that was not just like, hey, here's what we're doing.

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Speaker 1: It is here is how to drive on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the road. And then um, you've got uh,

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Speaker 1: street signs, you've got bus stops, you've got traffic lights,

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Speaker 1: you got bicycle lanes, you got one way streets, you

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Speaker 1: got busses that have doors on one side of the

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Speaker 1: vehicle that now need doors on the other side. It

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Speaker 1: was huge. Yeah. What one of the other things too,

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Speaker 1: was the Swedes didn't even want to do this. There

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Speaker 1: was a there was a referendum that had been held

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Speaker 1: ten years before when they started thinking about doing this,

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Speaker 1: and like of Swedish voters said no, Yeah, they did

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Speaker 1: want to start driving on the right hand side of

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Speaker 1: the road, and the government said, well, we're doing it anyway.

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Speaker 1: And the reason why they wanted to do this in

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Speaker 1: the first place was because Sweden was um kind of

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Speaker 1: lagging behind the rest of Europe, which had started to

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Speaker 1: increasingly or the rest of the world, I should say,

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Speaker 1: which has started to increasingly drive on the right hand

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Speaker 1: side of the road, and so that was one thing.

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Speaker 1: Sweden didn't want to look backwards or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: But then the other thing is that they the government

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Speaker 1: was like, this may cause fewer fatalities because while we

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Speaker 1: drive on the left side of the road, we're buying cars,

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Speaker 1: including Volvos, that are designed to be driven on the

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Speaker 1: right hand side of the road. So you're driving on

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Speaker 1: the left hand side of the road on the left

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Speaker 1: side of your car, which means you were just kind

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Speaker 1: of looking down into this little ditch next to you

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Speaker 1: with oncoming traffic, which seems it seems reasonable that they

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Speaker 1: thought this was a dangerous situation. Yeah, you know, I

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Speaker 1: never really considered that because I didn't wonder what the

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Speaker 1: big deal was. My only experience, I think I've said

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Speaker 1: before was when we were on the Australian Tour, I

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Speaker 1: drove opposite side and right hand side, steering wheel wise.

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Speaker 1: But now that I think about it, I guess it

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Speaker 1: would be a little weird to be opposite side with

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Speaker 1: the regular setup, right, Yeah, it would be a little weird,

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Speaker 1: like you'd be really far removed from kind of where

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Speaker 1: you need to be paying the most attention, I think

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Speaker 1: is the thing. And and and they ultimately did show

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Speaker 1: a decline in traffic accidents and fatalities because of DOGG

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Speaker 1: and H, but they think it was because people were

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Speaker 1: just paying more attention getting used to driving on the

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Speaker 1: right hand side, because within two years it went back

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Speaker 1: up to about normal. Yeah. I think people are a

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Speaker 1: little extra cautious, which is great. Um, here's the thing, though,

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Speaker 1: when you do something like this, it's not like little

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Speaker 1: by little over the course of a month you can

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Speaker 1: start changing street signs, because that would be chaos. So

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Speaker 1: the night before and the day before they had to

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Speaker 1: shut down basically almost all traffic. You had to have

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Speaker 1: special permissions to have a car on the road at all.

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Speaker 1: And they had to change three hundred and sixty thousand

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Speaker 1: street signs in less than twenty four hours. Were they successful.

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Speaker 1: We'll let you know right after this message breaks. Okay, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: I can't stand the tension any longer. Were they successful

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Speaker 1: in changing three hundred and sixty thousand street signs all

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Speaker 1: across Sweden in one single night. Well, I want to

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Speaker 1: say for sure, my gut says they may have missed

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Speaker 1: one or two, okay, but over over, overall they were

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Speaker 1: very successful. At four fifty in the a m on September,

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Speaker 1: bunch bunch of people came out to watch. There were

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Speaker 1: cars on the road and they said stop, go to

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Speaker 1: the other side, and directed people the other side and

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Speaker 1: said all right, have have a blast everybody. Yeah. There

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Speaker 1: was like a countdown on the radio, and then there

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Speaker 1: was the announcement after after they reached one that Sweden

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Speaker 1: now drives on the right hand side of the road

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Speaker 1: and everybody could start driving. And I'm sure they were

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Speaker 1: like wobbling and weaving and kind of like little kids

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Speaker 1: on a bike with training wheels or after having the

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Speaker 1: training was taken off. I should say, I'll bet it

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Speaker 1: was adorable to see. But um there were the next

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Speaker 1: day that was a Sunday at like five am when

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Speaker 1: they started, and the next the next business day, Monday.

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Speaker 1: There were no fatalities. Nobody died and they were like

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Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty seven car wrex, which is slightly

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Speaker 1: lower than a normal Monday in Sweden. Yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: was not cheap either. Obviously it's gonna cost a ton

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Speaker 1: of money. At the time it costs six million kroner,

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Speaker 1: which was astronaut Yeah, it's about three and sixteen million

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Speaker 1: American dollars today, but about five more than the government's

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Speaker 1: estimated budget, which is not a bad overrun, No, not

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Speaker 1: at all. And um, if you read some of the

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Speaker 1: articles on it we we used, in addition to a

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Speaker 1: couple of others, this one BBC article about it that

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Speaker 1: was super interesting. They pointed out some of the people

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Speaker 1: who were there and took part in this point out like, dude,

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Speaker 1: you that was ridiculously cheap, even for the time, for this,

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Speaker 1: the massive scale of this, not just the infrastructure again

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Speaker 1: but also the all of the public information campaign too.

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Speaker 1: They they did it for cheap, and they did it

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Speaker 1: really quickly. Yeah, it's it was quite a project. My

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Speaker 1: hat is off to them for doing it by all accounts,

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Speaker 1: like pretty successfully. Yeah, they did it, and they said

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Speaker 1: that's great. But then, like I said, traffic fatalities went

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Speaker 1: back up, um after a couple of years when people

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Speaker 1: got used to it, and so UM Sweden undertook a

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Speaker 1: projects starting in that UM that said, we're we we

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Speaker 1: don't want any traffic fatalities no matter what side of

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Speaker 1: the road we drive on, um, in our country. So

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Speaker 1: they came up with a program called Vision Zero, and um,

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Speaker 1: they've just been slowly but surely trying to whittle down

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Speaker 1: the number of traffic fatalities and in two thousand and

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Speaker 1: sixteen it was down to two hundred and seventy. That's

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Speaker 1: a minuscule amount for a country the size of Sweden

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Speaker 1: for an entire year. So who knows if they'll ever

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Speaker 1: get to zero, but hats off to them for also

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Speaker 1: for for trying to do that. Yeah, and for digging

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Speaker 1: up Telestar to cut the hit song Vision zero, right,

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Speaker 1: they literally had to dig one of the members up.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, I got nothing else except to recommend

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Speaker 1: the Invisible episode because they do their show a little differently,

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Speaker 1: so they got some cool interviews with people that were

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Speaker 1: there at the time, and um, it's always you know,

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Speaker 1: a little more dressed up than our show, and by

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Speaker 1: that I mean way more dressed up. Agreed, they do

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Speaker 1: it very well over there. So uh, that's it for

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Speaker 1: short stuff. Go ahead on over to nine Invisible and

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Speaker 1: we will see you next time. How ddios Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H