Bring back the miles signs on the road?

6th · 11-09-2007 04:51PM

I dont miss them at all.

thelordofcheese · 11-09-2007 04:54PM

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

Let's use leagues or wheels.

We'll use cubits and you'll damn well like it, whippersnapper!

monkeyfudge · 11-09-2007 05:00PM

What's the longest word in the dictionary?

biko · 11-09-2007 05:08PM

Pah, I use time to measure distance anyway.
"Sure, it's about 40 minutes drive towards Ennis. How many miles? F*cked if I know..."

seamus · 11-09-2007 05:08PM

watna wrote:

Europeans can be wierd about measurements too. In Austria we use packets of sauces that say add 3/8 of a litre of water. How on earth do you do that?

Actually, decimalisation does lead to some odd things when people start to bring in fractions.

It was only a couple of years ago that I realised that many (if not most) people don't know the decimal equivalent of common fractions by rote (like knowing your five times tables). An eighth is a common fraction, so in the same way that you know that 1/4 is equal to 0.25, it should be drilled into you in school that 1/8 is 0.125 and 3/8 is 0.375, and 1/20 is 0.05 and 1/25 is 0.04. And so on.

11-09-2007 05:13PM

Won't someone please think of the drug dealers.

It BeeMee · 11-09-2007 06:02PM

I'm sure if you asked nicely, the barman would give you a half-litre of your favourite tipple, and "only" charge the the price of a normal pint....

smemon · 11-09-2007 06:13PM

hell no!

and give up that extra 2/3mph we get on the 60mph conversion into 100km/hr?

100km/hr = 62mph

So our national roads are moving 2mph faster under the current system

We do lose out though on the 50/60/80 km/hr limits :cool:

Mellor · 11-09-2007 06:17PM

TPD wrote:

I dont like the American way of counting liquid volume in ounces. If its actually the wieght theyre counting, then 40 ounces of one beverage could be more than 40 ounces of a thicker drink, which doesnt make sense to me.

Its nothing to do with weight, they're fluid oz
Our imperial system is the same

The problem is that US fl.oz and imperial fl.oz are different
So because of this pints are different (16 fl.oz), and then gallons are different (8 pints)

Zaph · 11-09-2007 06:33PM

We definitely shouldn't change back because I've just bought a new car and the speedo is in km/h

Here's an excellent site for all your conversion needs www.convert-me.com

As for the fluid ounces thing, an Imperial fluid ounce is 28.41 millilitres and a US one is 29.57 milliliters.

E92 · 11-09-2007 07:12PM

I love the way people don't want to use the old fashioned system 'because the Brits use it'. Are those people seriously saying that if the Brits said in the morning 'we're going to do everthing metric from now on' that we should now go back and use feet, pounds, degrees Fahrenheit etc?

The Brits and the US are by far and away our biggest trading partners. It therefore makes sense to know their systems of measurement, where necessary.

I've yet to hear someone tell me 'such and such a place is X km away'. People always say its so many hours or miles away.

27 years on from when the EU told us to do so(43:eek: in the Brit's case, the Commonwealth decided to change in 1964 I think, and Britain was the first country to start the changeover:eek: ),we still use the old fashioned system in lots of places: Golf(Yards; I know some courses, including the one where I usually play use metres), Horses(heads, hands, Furlongs, miles,stone), when we weigh ourselves(stones and pounds), measure our heights(feet and inches), Fuel Consumption(miles per gallon), going to the pub(Pints), buying certain items(Pounds of sausages, Rashers etc), Cars/Roads(plenty of people still use mph and miles[especially miles], used cars before 05 will have the mileage displayed in miles), dog races(Yards again), when we go to try on clothes, the size of the waist,leg etc is in inches, Houses(Square Feet), Room diameter(feet and inches), talking about vehicles' power(bhp/hp, kilowatts is the metric unit).

On the other hand, practically everything else we buy is in metric, we buy petrol by the litre, virtually everything in a shop is in kilos and litres, cars are weighed in kilos, measured in some version of metres, cars go from 0-100 instead of 0-60 these days, top speeds are in km/h, road signs post distances in kilometres, our BMI is calculated by the metric system, anything remotely connected with science or engineering has been metric for so long, nobody would remember the old fashioned way.

Definately metric system ftw,but theres still(plenty of) life in the old fashioned system yet.:D

Captain Chaos · 11-09-2007 07:27PM

Keep it. In my work I use metres and kilos all day every day and have done before we went metric. To an adult of average height, a metre is from: extend one arm fully out to one side, its from the tips of those fingers to your opposite shoulder, or one good pace, heel to toe.

BTW, remember that probe tht was sent to Mars a fews years ago and got lost. It was built with parts from the EU and US. The EU systems worked off metric units and US from imperial units. NASA told the US contractors to use the metric system as thats the standard NASA use in space.

Just get your metres, kilos and litres and your sorted. None of this mile, foot, inches, ounces, pounds lark, where nothing directly relates to anything else.

JIZZLORD · 11-09-2007 07:30PM

Myth wrote:

Won't someone please think of the drug dealers.

exactly what i thought

murphaph · 11-09-2007 08:07PM

I used to work on a lot of american machinery and it was all built in US 'inch' or as the yanks say 'english' measurements (the americans don't say 'imperial' as that was the british term). The machines had tolerances down to '1 thou' or 0.001". It became intuitive despite my schooling exclusively in metric like most people born on the 70's. The only difficult concepts were tools in imperial sizes-a 4mm allen key is an easy concept to handle but 5/32 of an inch (which is almost the same) is a bit more abstract. Then of course the actual screws (bolts) were all Unified Coarse/Fine/Extra Fine standards as opposed to the much more convenient Mx (ISO) system used in pretty much the rest of the world. Only the US/Canada still resists the ISO thread standard. For roadsigns I thonk it makes absolutely no difference for an island nation like ourselves as to what system we use. It'd be different if say, Switzerland opted to go imperial. That would confuse a lot of people needlessly. It's interesting to note that UK roads are designed and built in METRIC! They don't use feet and inches in the designs. Indeed, many signs (like motorway exit countdown markers) are spaced in metres but signed in yards, so are slightly inaccurate. Strange but true! The UK switched to teaching eclusively in metric a bit later than us I believe, but I epect resistance to metric to fall away completely as this generation grows up. Remember-there was massive opposition to decimalisation in the 70's too.

murphaph · 11-09-2007 08:25PM

Captain Chaos wrote:

BTW, remember that probe tht was sent to Mars a fews years ago and got lost. It was built with parts from the EU and US. The EU systems worked off metric units and US from imperial units. NASA told the US contractors to use the metric system as thats the standard NASA use in space.

It was Lockheed Martin, an american subcontractor who reused software from a previous mars explorer mission which coverted from lbs-seconds to newtons-seconds. It was a complicated mix up not easily expained (or understood!) but if they hadn't resused code it wouldn't have been a problem. Interestingly the Ariane rocket that was destroyed just after takeoff was also du to reused control software not being fully tested! I think these two were some of the most expensive computer software failures in history.

Wishbone Ash · 11-09-2007 08:42PM

monkeyfudge wrote:

What's the longest word in the dictionary?

'Smiles'

liberty 2007 · 11-09-2007 10:04PM

Finally the british have done something for us. Its about freedom of choice. Say these words out loud, pound, foot, inch, yard, pint, mile, how easy to they role of the tongue, now try say the euro equivalent.

JoeB- · 24-03-2008 03:47AM

monkeyfudge wrote: »

What's the longest word in the dictionary?

I see wishbone got here before me with 'Smiles'..

I reckon 'taut' is longer...

... only by about 92 million times mind you...

monkeyfudge · 24-03-2008 04:01AM

Marmalade is another pretty long word.

deaddonkey · 24-03-2008 05:07AM

despite being taught metric in school, kilometres away, kilometres per hour, he weighs 85 kg, none of it makes sense to me. It wouldn't even occur to me to measure a small distance in cm or mm either. Imperial all the way.

Victor · 24-03-2008 07:51AM

E92 wrote: »

And now, I'm after reading that our gallons are different to American gallons, at least a litre is a litre everywhere so that is definately another reason not to use old fashioned measurements where possible.

They call litres liters!

shane86 · 24-03-2008 08:55AM

JC 2K3 wrote: »

No... where's the sense in that?

I'm 18 and have never been taught anything about the imperial system, same as the rest of my peers. Makes sense for the government to use the measurement system it teaches.

In fairness how many people of your age group, or indeed any age group, calculate distance in km? None- when you see a sign with 80KM distance on it you instantly do the maths to work out it is 50.

Schism · 24-03-2008 11:56AM

shane86 wrote: »

In fairness how many people of your age group, or indeed any age group, calculate distance in km? None- when you see a sign with 80KM distance on it you instantly do the maths to work out it is 50.

I'd say quite a few use metric now actually, personally I think of things in imperial i.e the limit is 50 or 60 mph even though it wasn't taught to me in school but thats just me.

I've been looked at funny when giving directions saying that something is so many yards such a way.

Alun · 24-03-2008 12:19PM

Mellor wrote: »

Its nothing to do with weight, they're fluid oz
Our imperial system is the same

The fluid oz. is strictly a measure of volume, not mass (or weight), but 1 fl. oz. of pure water also (very nearly) weighs 1 oz. analogous to the way in which 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg.

The problem is that US fl.oz and imperial fl.oz are different
So because of this pints are different (16 fl.oz), and then gallons are different (8 pints)

The US fl. oz. is slightly different to the Imperial fl. oz. due to the way they're now officially defined, but the difference is minute (1 US fl. oz. = 1.040842731 imperial fl. oz.) the big difference is due to the fact that a US pint is 16 fl. oz. instead of 20 fl. oz. under the Imperial system, hence the US gallon (which is still 8 US pints) is different too.

BTW .. anyone old enough to remember the rhyme "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter" ?

JC 2K3 · 24-03-2008 01:39PM

shane86 wrote: »

In fairness how many people of your age group, or indeed any age group, calculate distance in km? None- when you see a sign with 80KM distance on it you instantly do the maths to work out it is 50.

Well I don't drive, so I don't do much reading of distance or speed limit signs. Having a rough knowledge of what speed equates to 30mph, 60mph etc., when we switched over to speed limit signs in km/h, I would have done the mental maths and converted them whenever I happened to read them, but now I reckon I have a good grasp of speeds in km/h.

And if I'm ever arsed learning to drive, I really don't think I'll be thinking in miles.

24-03-2008 02:56PM

One of the main reasons that people still use imperial measurements is that the measuring instruments still allow for imperial readings, in many countries where they have adopted metric they have also outlawed the sale of imperial weighing scales, tape measures etc. now these people only use metric as they are unable to see the imperial equivalent anymore (unless they have an old set of scales).

PS Dublin is still 80 miles away as my car odometer measures in miles

seamus · 24-03-2008 03:02PM

shane86 wrote: »

In fairness how many people of your age group, or indeed any age group, calculate distance in km? None- when you see a sign with 80KM distance on it you instantly do the maths to work out it is 50.

Nope, I don't. My speedo is still in MPH, but I use KM to work out time/distance. Tis way easier.

Run_to_da_hills · 24-03-2008 03:04PM

Bring back the Mile. Metric is Bunk, missleading and French!!!

chopperbyrne · 24-03-2008 03:18PM

I started school on 1987 and we were never taught any imperial measurements.

So for at least the last 21 years all children in this country have been taught using the metric system. It makes no sense to go back and nothing in this country should be sold with imperial measurements on it.

Run_to_da_hills · 24-03-2008 03:35PM

chopperbyrne wrote: »

I started school on 1987 and we were never taught any imperial measurements.

So for at least the last 21 years all children in this country have been taught using the metric system. It makes no sense to go back and nothing in this country should be sold with imperial measurements on it.

It was the oposite for me. Metric came in in secondary. I remember having a kids ruler with just inch measurements.

Bring back the miles signs on the road?

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