Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs?

Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs?

km/h speed limits in LONDON!

In my travels around the United Kingdom, I've seen many progressive metric signs, such as metris-only width & height restrictions, metric fingerposts and the like. However, today, whilst walking down "Millionaire's lane" I saw the light... the use of km/h speed limits here in London.

One may think of this as being too good to be true if you're a metrichead, and indeed there are some flaws:

1. The km/h speed limit is not a 'regular' number; (24 km/h rather than 25 km/h)
2. The km/h sign is not stand-alone. It is below a sign stating the speed limit in MPH (15 MPH)
3. The km/h speed sign shows uses the horrible kph abbreviation, rather than the the standardised symbol (km/h)

With that being said, we have to admit, that this is still good. People are recognising that we can not remain in the dark ages of miles and yards.

Special Report: Antigua

At the moment I'm on holiday in Antigua and due to a heavy American influence here, there is a fierce usage of imperial /US customary measurements. Goods in supermarkets are sold by the pound and ounce, the speed limits are in miles per hour -national speed limit being 40 miles per hour( rounded to 65 km/h), say the word metre and it's like you're speaking a foreign language.

Excluding the use of the Litre, the metric system is practically unused in here, outside of schools, and it is not understood by a considerable majority of the people.

What's Interesting however, Antigua has officially gone metric within the last 5 years. The only evidence of this, can be seen in the direction signage, which shows distance in kilometres (and fractions thereof). I believe they were erected with distances marked in kilometres because of the Cricket World Cup in 2006. People objected to them, initially, but now have no choice but to get used to them. (Although in a country that's only 281 square kilometres, distances are not that important.)

In Britain, we have a Catalyst (the OLYMPICS) and should use that to metricate our signs. The country's been metric for all of my life, yet still miles and yards? Utterly pointless!

Fuel consumption/ fuel effinciency

Miles per gallon, it's the "standard measure" of fuel consumption in the UK although the kilometre is much more widely used than the gallon. (making a metric measure more sensible!)

But I don't care about miles per gallon...

So,

in civilised terms, fuel consumption is measured in litres per 100 kilometres. (L/100km)

is this really practical?

Most British car adverts show fuel consumption in L/100km (unfortunately most times in brackets and in small print).

but why not kilometres per litre? (km/L)

personally, I think km/L is simpler to get to grips with, and more practical because you know that you'll drive y km using x L of petrol at a given fuel consumption.
(y/x km/L). eg. 6 km on 2 litres of petrol at 3km/L!

using L/100km is not as practical!


so why make life more difficult?

sure many people would rather switch to km/L rather than L/100km!


why not use km/L ?
...they do in Latin America and Japan!

Sorry for the lack of posting...

I had my heart set on going out and getting some shots of signs vandalised by the imperial-loving idiots, but unfortunately, my bike has been stolen. In light of this I bought a new one, and that was also stolen. So that has put a damper on me going around trying to get shots.
In the mean time i'll just moan about the notation of km/h again..

I was reading through one of my textbooks today and there was a question stating:
"suppose an advertisement for a new model of car states that it does an average of 12 kilometres per litre (kpl)at a speed of 80kph..."

You'd think that a university text book author at least would have the intellect to get it right?

Kilometres per litre, although not the most widely accepted metric form of measuring fuel consumptution (the more common one is L/100km) is a correct and accepted form, however why kpl?
quite clearly km/l (or km/L) clearly!

and again this kph rubbish... it's km/h for crying out loud!

maybe getting rid of rubbish like miles per gallon and miles per hour would help the situation?

speaking of which, who uses the gallon anyway?

My Report is HERE!

I've gotten this report on to PDF, and you can see the report here:


Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs?


I'd also like to make a special thanks to Derek Pollard of the UKMA for providing me with information regarding this report!

"Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the UK Not Adopted Metric Road Signs?"

Sorry for being away so long, i've been having tonnes of coursework to do and stuff like that.
The question above, was one that i chose for one of the pieces of coursework, and i'm going to post it on the blog, hopefully by tomorrow, or even sooner if i can convert it to PDF format as soon as possible.

I think many of you may find it interesting!