Metric sign of the times

The stupidity and gullibility of some of my fellow Brits never ceases to amaze me and it winds me up that a small and vocal minority can manage to pull the wool over so many people's eyes so effectively. Today my eye was drawn to a story on the website of the British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA : http://www.bwmaonline.com/index.html). Now don't get to thinking this organisation is a government department or a proper company, it is merely a bunch of folks doing what it is within their legal and democratic right to do, campaign for something they strongly believe in. Unfortunatly, if you sit and think for a few minutes, you realise that there are many flaws in their thought processes. I think the first thing that tells you the sort of people they are is where they seem to indicate that you should go out and deface metric signs!

The thing that caught my eye today was a story about a chap from Essex called Mr Adam Doggett. It would seem that back in 2001 he managed to drive his car under a low bridge, one so low that it damaged the roof of his car. He made a complaint to the local authority and, since it seems that the maximum height sign was "misleading", paid up for repairs. So, why were the BWMA interested in this? Well, it would seem that the sign in question was metric.

Lets look a little closer. Mr Doggett was at the time 36, only a couple of years younger than me and so (by his own admission) educated in the metric system. The complaint he made was that the sign, which indicated max safe height as 1.4m, wasn't something he understood. He apparently knew that his car was 4 ft 9 inches in height but didn't know that 1.4m was actually only 4 ft 7 inches.

Well, here's the problem isn't it. It was just plain wrong to have a sign showing metric heights. Or this is what the BWMA want us to think. In this case though I have to agree with them, but not for the reason you might think. The problem is that as Mr Doggett was correct to point out, even though he'd been educated in metric, once he'd left school there was little need for him to use it. It is still mandatory to show height, width and length restrictions in imperial units and metric is only optional (except on length where it is illegal). What makes this all more of a farce is that Mr Doggett was driving a Suzuki Jeep, a vehicle manufactured in Japan, a country which uses the metric system. It is most likely that although this vehicle was more than 10 years old that the owners manual shows vehicle dimensions in metric (being an older vehicle there may have been conversion to imperial for the UK market).

I personally find I have the opposite problem. The owners manual for my car shows it's dimensions ONLY in metric units. Like Mr Doggett I was educated in metric, but over the years I have tried my hardest to use metric where possible and so the fact that my car's dimensions are 4311mm x 1999mm x 1684mm and the weight is 1540kg is not an issue for me. I undestand these quantaties and I am not about to rush off and convert these to feet, inches and lbs in the same way as Mr Baggett was not about to do the other way around. My problem is that although all weight limit signs are now supposed to be in tonnes, in some places this is not the case (stand up Cambridgeshire where I have seen more signs with "tons" than anywhere else and even one sign with both!). What is worse is that, even though we have thousands of foriegn drivers on our roads, metric height and width limit signs are optional and thanks to pressure from the "loony foot brigade" many local authorities have stopped putting these up. Many private car parks show limits in metric but not in feet and inches (although some do both).

What this all boils down to is the fact that back in 1974 our government decided we'd all use metric, legislated for our schools to teach it, then failed to be decisive on conversion. If our roads had gone metric back in the 1970's as was originally intended then Mr Doggett would no doubt have not damaged his car. In addition the BWMA would not exist; there would be a few sad old men who would hark back to old times when Britannia ruled the waves and feet and inches were king, but they would only find comfort in the few nuts who probably also want us to convert back from Pounds, Shillings and Pence. We wouldn't wonder what all the fuss was about because it would be long past and we'd all be down the pub drinking our 1/2 litres of beer complaining about the price of the doorstep litre of milk and debating the benefits of increasing the motorway speed limit to 130km/h.

Let me leave you with a final thought on this subject. Given that my car is 1999mm wide, if I approach a width limit of 6 ft 6 inches will my car fit through? I only ask because when you do see a metric equivalent it is often given as 2 metres, but according to my conversion 6 ft 6 in is only 1981mm and so my car will likely be damaged! This is what happens when you try to cater for choice of units!