Brit_in_Japan

With the conservatives talking about increasing speed limits on motorways, is it the right time to consider moving wholesale to a metric speedlimits and metric milages on roadsigns in the UK ?

130kmh on motorways as in France (about 78mph)
30kmh limit outside schools (about 20mph)

Yes it will cost millions, but we are in the 21st century after all, isn't time we ditched the old units ?

OllyK

Well if you are changing all the signs we may as well move to driving on the right as well and be totally European.

LG John

You can't ever IMHO. Once you've adopted a system I don't see how you can ever change it. There would be carnage everywhere and insurance would go through the roof!!

milo

they could always tier it...

so one day migrate trucks to drive on the right side, the next day migrate cars across, then the next day cyclists...

Jiggerypokery

Or, Volvos on day one, BMWs on day two (they're used to driving on the right anyway, it might get them into the left lane on motorways if they thought it was the new "fast lane")
We'll keep the trucks on the scooby side until the above are cleared off the roads.

KMPH would mean a wild amount of money spent, which could be spent elsewhere. It ain't broke, don't fix it.

LG John

For the first year you could have all the women drive on the 'wrong' side and then after that all the blokes. It would probaby take the women at least a year to get the hang of it so it would be a perfect transition with no crashes with the exception of the few post-op transexual males that would continue to screw up for the best part of a year

Brendan Hughes

OMG he mentioned transsexuals...

Brit_in_Japan

heading for muppets I see....

I'm not talking about changing what side of the road, simply the speed limits and distance signs. Most other things have changed to metric now, petrol priced in litres etc. All speedos for many years have included kmh markings. Apart from keeping pints (of beer) I see no reason for not using metric units for everything else.

OllyK

One of the Scandanavian countries managed about 20 years ago IIRC, thanks Google, it was Sweden.

and one or two others as well:

Most countries have changed in order to ease border crossings. For example, former British colonies in West Africa, such as Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ghana changed over, as they all shared borders with former French colonies, which drove on the right. There are still many instances of having to change sides at border crossings, such as between Uganda and Sudan or Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Hong Kong and Macau, traffic continues to drive on the left, unlike in mainland China, despite the fact that they are now Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China. However, Taiwan, formerly under Japanese rule, changed to driving on the right in 1946 after becoming part of the Republic of China, along with some mainland Chinese provinces, as did Korea under US and Soviet occupation.

GarethE

iTrader: (1)

Fed up of pandering to European requirements - let them change over to our system

OllyK

Coz I am old and am happier with miles than Km.

milo

a litre is lots more than a pint

Jerome

There is a little publicised EU regulation that states the EU countries (ie the UK) will have to go completely metric by the year 2009. This will include using km instead of miles on signs.

Brendan Hughes

I could bet that none of the countries who changed had the level and density of car ownership that the UK has at present. They did it because they could. Others (India, Pakistan, Japan, Thailand?) don't do it because, frankly, they can't.

anyway, he was on m v km not left v right. I'd agree with it, but I'm not very British anyway by now...

JohnMcC

I happened to be reading up on this the other day catually - why countries drive on whatever side etc....

Yes, the sheer density of traffic now would make it economically unfeasible to change sides of the road, at least in nations with a developed (if crumbling ) road network.

Sweden did it because it made economic sense - something about it being cheaper to import left hand drive cars or something.......It wouldnt be the same now I would imagine, as (if Sweden is anything like us) the density of cars on the road will have shot up since then.

Its a similar story with MPH -> KPH - would cost too much money IMO - I cant see it producing any great economic advantage.

Brendan Hughes

Not sure I agree about cost, Lordy knows how you would measure economic advantage. Assuming there's been an international standard to produce cars with kmh on the inside of the clock for about the last 10-15 yrs (I don't know but I'm guessing) then you just need to change what? Numbers on roadsigns and maps? Maps you could almost do by some sort of blanket calculation (X=X*1.609). And we already have a bunch of 50 roadsigns to replace the 30 ones, you'd just need to print those for 80 and 130 (hope, not 115!!). Manufacture half a million panels that say "km" in the correct font and bolt them to each roadsign, what's the problem?

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The tachos on Trucks and buses are already in Kph. So really, the signs should be in both Kph and Mph

OllyK

Pay a visit to southern Ireland. They are converting from Miles to KM and it is a right pain in the ***. SOme signs are in Miles and other in KM and many have no units on at all so you never know how far you are from anywhere. May as well do away with distances and go "Close, Not too far now, Gonna take a while still, Better get some more gas as you are hours away"

Dream Weaver

Miles are more masculine than km IMHO

besides, who would pay for all the speedos to be converted.

The bloody Euro's should change to our way!!

what would scooby do

How interesting - surprised nobody picked that one up

Brendan Hughes

You think it was an error? Poor guy spent ages typing kilometrage - kilometerage - kilometreag - before he just gave up

Ta Olly, I didn't know. Let me take three guesses at who's funding it...

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

It always made me wonder why British cars had Miles and Kilometres on them and European cars only had Kilometres on them, It makes it fecking difficult when I drive my LHD euro Kilometre reading car in the UK.

OllyK

I dread to think!

homer lawtey

We shouldn't do it, they would work out what each speed limit is in km/h, then round the figure down to the nearest 10.

Leslie

Since I am British and intend to stay that way, I am loyal to my country and certainly don't entertain the idea of changing to continental metric units. As someone else said-let them change to our units.

Les

Nimbus

I thought only the queen has power to allow roadsigns to be displyed in metric? I rember a case where a warning sign was put up with "200 m ahead" and it had to be changed to "200 yds adead" or whatever the distance was"..