Comments on: Polish language signs highlight signage mess

by: George Carty

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:38:48 +0000

Won’t most of the signs with “m” for miles on them be advance directions signs on the approach to interchanges on motorways and other fast roads?

by: Tim Bentley

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:24:45 +0000

I totally agree that the DfT should authorise the use of metres for horizontal distances, after all they do allow them for vertical measurements.
It would be some help to foreign drivers and I’m sure it would cause no confusion to British drivers as even the least metric-minded people know what a metre is. I suspect that the DfT might have a slight worry that some people might mistake miles for metres but I’m sure that would not happen as metres would only be used for distances less than a thousand metres. In the short term, (until eventually we go for full metrication of road signs), in the rare cases when m is used for miles then perhaps they could abbreviate miles with ‘mi’.

by: Philip S Hall

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:57:04 +0000

The fact that distances are given in metres on the Polish signs is clear recognition that yards are not helpful to foreign drivers.

British drivers know the metre just as well as the Poles. Distances in metres on non-traffic signs are common-place nowadays.

The DfT are crazy not to authorise metres for distance indications on all traffic signs. It’s the obvious solution and there is nothing to be lost.

by: Philip Bladon/ SI Metric-Matters

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:55:40 +0000

Will the Government ensure that there is complete metric road signage well before 2012 (the year of the London Olympics)?
It is time to archive Imperial units.

by: David

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:50:05 +0000

The news article reveals more than it realises. As a modern country working in the global economy, it is a fact that there are lots of foreign drivers in the UK at any one time (and plenty British people on business trips abroad, of course ..all coping just fine with metric road signs). So it’s no wonder Polish lorry-drivers would be getting stumped with signs in “yds”, I’m sure it’s not a word (it’s not a word) they’ll find in the dictionary.

And it’s a miracle that there haven’t been more bridge strikes, with low bridges marked with signs which don’t give any obvious indication of measure whatsoever, just strange (to foreigners) ′ and ″ marks. How any of these drivers are supposed to know whether they can get a 5 m high lorry under any of these bridges is anybody’s guess. And I’m sure there are many British lorry drivers, educated in metric, whose knowledge of feet and inches starts to get very hazy once you start talking about numbers bigger than 6..

It really is time that we got on with the job of converting our roadsigns to metric measures. Our maps have been drawn in nice round metric scales (eg, 1:50 000, 1:100 000), and handily marked out with kilometre squares to help quickly work out rough distances, for many many years, and our roadsigns should really catch up. New hazard warning signs could be marked in metres straight away, as yards are a close enough approximation to metres over the short distances involved. Then new distance signs could have kilometres clearly marked in ‘dual units’, so that, as signs are replaced, after a few years, there would be no mile-only signs left and then signs could be marked in km only.

by: Alex Bailey

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:27:35 +0000

Completely bonkers… we’re told we’re not clever enough to deal with metric on the roads but when it comes to languages, first it’s Welsh, now it’s Polish! I just got back from a week driving around Canada and they clearly have no issues using metric, even with two languages in use! The comments I got from some of the folks south of the border is that they couldn’t understand why they weren’t going metric too!