Imperial Nonsense

[Keep it stiff]

Motorway warning signs displaying "Closed to vehicles over 6ft 9 inches". So that will be 2m then and in which case why not say so?

[Leptons]

Yes and what’s your stance on speed and distance measurement?

[Zonergem]

Will of the people, innit?

[A1VDY]

Leptons said:

Yes and what’s your stance on speed and distance measurement?

It'll be kph and metres/kilometres which he doesn't use.
His tyre pressures will be psi too definetly not bar..

[Olas]

2 meters, 5.7 centimetres.

Divide by 3.281

[mygoldfishbowl]

Brexit, and 2m isn't 6ft 9 inches.

Edit, beaten to it.

[Olas]

mygoldfishbowl said:

Brexit, and 2m isn't 6ft 9 inches.

2.057 as previously stated.

[Keep it stiff]

Don't get me going on that one, speed limiters set at 56!

[Keep it stiff]

Olas said:

2.057 as previously stated.

Indeed, but clearly calculated for signage as 2m rounded to the nearest inch!

[g3org3y]

Keep it stiff said:

Motorway warning signs displaying "Closed to vehicles over 6ft 9 inches". So that will be 2m then and in which case why not say so?

Is the industry standard/convention for describing the height of trucks in feet/inches?

[Keep it stiff]

Keep it stiff said:

Indeed, but clearly calculated for signage as 2m rounded to the nearest inch!

Were it not for the limited capacity of the matrix sign I guess they could have added and "three eighths"!

[TwyRob]

Keep it stiff said:

Indeed, but clearly calculated for signage as 2m rounded to the nearest inch!

6 ft 6 is closest to 2m.

[Dr Jekyll]

I remember a book that described a certain car as 'looking as though it was doing 93.75 MPH even when standing still'.

[DickyC]

Aston Martin took the Zagato V8 to Le Mans for a pre-race blast hoping to see 186mph on the Mulsanne.

[grumpy52]

As the vast majority of the driving public didn't have a metric education they default to imperial.
The vast majority of width restrictions are signed in imperial but I do wonder why most of them are 6' 6" which is the nominal for a 2m conversion .

[DickyC]

Altitude in aviation is mostly quoted in feet.

[FiF]

Suspect it's the other way round now in terms of proportion of working population educated and brought up on metric measurements being the majority.

I was brought up in early years on imperial, but still in school when SI units taught, now after years of working in both metric and imperial weights and measures due to dealing with USA and RoW either comes naturally.

Even then some things come naturally, eg weather temperatures, feels better to talk Fahrenheit when it's hot but Celsius when it's cold. Why?

[otolith]

grumpy52 said:

As the vast majority of the driving public didn't have a metric education they default to imperial.

Schools went metric in the late 60's / early 70's, so to have not had a metric education at all one would really need to have been born in the late 50's at the latest.

The UK's median age is 40.5

I suppose the driving population might be a little older, but I suspect not that much older.

[otolith]

FiF said:

Even then some things come naturally, eg weather temperatures, feels better to talk Fahrenheit when it's hot but Celsius when it's cold. Why?

Because that's how the newspapers report it, because it makes it sound more dramatic.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/...

[Riley Blue]

Wheel and tyre sizes are illogical.