Inches, feet and miles may actually be dangerous!

Ok, so this might sound like a silly thing to say... and you may from my previous blogs just dismiss me as being one of those "europhile nutters" who wants to hand everything over to Brussels. Ok, so I like the EU and would prefer it if we as a country could move away from "government by tabloid". But this isn't the point I intend to make here.

For just a moment, forget the European Union and consider this. With the exception of the United States of America every other country in the world could be considered metric (with the exception of a Burma and some African country I can't remember right now). The funny thing is though that even in the USA it is legal to put up road signs showing distances and speed limits in metric, something which is illegal here in the UK! This isn't really my point though.

My point is this. It is most likely that almost every driver on British roads under the age of 40 was educated entirely in metric. It's probable that those between 40 and 45 (perhaps even older) had some amount of metric education. Given the ages at which people stop driving this means that well over half of the road-using population in the UK has never been formally taught how many feet there are in a mile or how long a yard is.

Go out on a day trip and it's a foregone conclusion you will see width limits that read 6'-6" or height limits such as 11'-4". Well, the owners manual for my car tells me it's 1999mm wide at the mirrors and 1750mm high with the roof rails on. It doesn't mention any other measurements and I seem to recall my physics and maths teachers telling us that ' and " are notations for minutes and seconds. Ok, so I picked up enough from my parents to know that the symbols actually mean foot and inch, but what about the growing number of foreign drivers in the UK... immigrants, tourists or otherwise?

Foreign lorry stuck under low bridge anyone? The press are always quick to blame "stupid foreigners" or sat-navs, but never pick up the simple matter of bad signing. I'm sure that the guy from Poland, Latvia or even France would know what 4 m is... and so would the majority of British drivers.

I'm not going to have somebody saying "they should learn our measurements if they want to drive on our roads" because road signs should be universal - as should all measurements in all reality - but in the UK clearly they're not.

You just have to look at distance signs to see where we add to the confusion. Just look at "Next services 1m and 27m". I'm British and I have to think "Ok, m here does not mean metres". Even the Americans have the sense to use "mi", especially since the international standards that even the UK is a signatory to requires that "m" be reserved for the metre.

The speedos on our cars do nothing to help either. The UK and USA are the only countries that require MPH to be shown on speedos. The UK is required to show km/h by EU law, the USA isn't - so rent the wrong car in Detroit and jump across the border to Canada and you'll be having fun with their speed limits. The reverse is now true in Europe and since 2005 the UK now has a land border with a country where there is no legal requirement to show MPH on the speedo - which means drivers from the Irish Republic cannot accurately judge their speeds on the roads of Northern Ireland.

And when I see a sign that says "Road works 800 yards" just how many 10ths of a mile is that?

Still with the issue of speedos, we have the same problem the other way around. Anybody who's driven more than just the distance than the ferry port to the hypermarche will understand the problems of sticking to speed limits in km/h when the markings on their speedo are too small, badly coloured or even both. Many countries are more zealous with speed enforcement and given cross-border cooperation on such things we're going to see a growing number of British motorists getting speeding tickets from all across the EU.

Be honest. If you were asked why you don't want to see metric on our roads what would be the reason? The usual ones (ignoring the jingoistic anti-foreigner responses) are "I've grown up with miles" or "I don't understand km". Well here's some news for you - you probably do. For some time the DfT have been saying that, to all intents and purposes, 1 yard is 1 metre. Approach road works on the motorway and you'll notice the count-down signs are usually placed right next to those little marker posts, the ones that are exactly 100 metres apart. Well, get this. Most younger people, when asked "How many yards in a mile" will answer 1000. So, there you have it. 1000 yards in a mile? Wrong. 1000 metres in a kilometre? Correct! So, we all know what a km is. As to metres, the same thing applies.

What's more, it's like litres at the petrol pump or the 1kg bag of sugar at the supermarket. Once it's been there a while you'll wonder what the fuss is about.

There's another benefit too... the government would have to look at speed limits. Wether you're a tree huger or a petrol head you're going to like the sound of that! It's the accepted norm that speed limits are set in multiples of 10. If you switch to km/h you have much greater flexibility. You have a road that is too straight and wide for 40mph but the nuts in the parish council think 50mph is too high? Easy, use 70 km/h instead as it sits between the two. As to motorways and dual carriageways, the government say they don't want to raise the motorway limit to 80mph... the latest excuse is the crash barriers aren't rated for that speed (although they do also say that the police often ignore drivers up to that speed anyway)... so 120 km/h like in Belgium and the Netherlands might be sufficient. 110 km/h on dual carriageways, 100 or 90 km/h could be used on the remainder of the trunk roads instead of the blunt instrument that's 60mph. After all, make a limit too low and people will ignore it... and then grow distrustful of other limits too. That's much more unsafe than breaking a badly set mph speed limit!

Until recently the government said the would metricate the roads when more people were metric-educated. Well, now there are they're using cost as an excuse. So, think about this. How much money is wasted educating our children in metric then letting them loose on an imperial-only road network? How much does it cost for the motor manufacturers to specially make those mph speedometers for our cars? How much extra is paid to translators who not only have to convert car manuals from Japanese or germane to English but also from metric to imperial - or even road engineers who work to metric standards then have to think about where t0 put the road signs?

Please. Save us some money and make our roads safer at the same time. Support metric road signs!