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Comment by vidoc | Hacker News Reader

This is such an inspiring story! We need something along those lines to changes two things Americans continue doing in isolation and against the rest of the world: tipping and circumcision :)

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Imperial system.

Logged in just to say the same. Metric system for life.

America uses the US Customary "system" - it's similar to Imperial, but some of the liquid measurements are different.

Do the other countries driving on the left need to switch, too? Or is the problem the Swedes had (lots of cars with left-hand drive) unique?

It would be unique because Sweden are attached to a continent where everyone drives on the other side of the road.

The other left hand sided driving countries are normally either in clusters together or are isolated by water and so don't have cars crossing the border.

Interestingly in the far east of Russia they get a lot of cars imported from Japan so the steering wheel is on the right hand side so they have the opposite problem.

No country really needs to switch — it's a matter of comparing costs versus benefits. There is some evidence that left hand traffic is safer despite being less common.

I don't think the world will ever be all one direction: the cost of changing the larger countries (China, India, Japan, the US) over would prohibit a mass change either way.

I'm pretty sure every country with a Jewish or Muslim population practices male circumcision, at least.

I pretty sure he's referring to this "hospital circumcision rates declined in the United States: from 64.5% in 1979 to 58.3% in 2010."[1]. So that implies at least 58% of newborns in a hospital are circumcised. Not a statistician or a census bureau employee but I'm pretty sure the US doesn't have >50% practicing Jewish + Muslim folks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#Uni...

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