It seems that the majority of posters to this forum are men and they seem to be mostly if not all pro-metric. The one or two women who post here are all anti-metric.

Industries that employ mostly men are all metric, such as engineering and the sciences, yet those that tend to employ mostly women are lagging, such as the clothing industry.

Most shopping is done by women and as the result the metrication of the market place has not been smooth.

Anyone agree or disagree with this observation?

“Road condition surveys paint contrasting pictures

Britain’s roads are either improving fast or getting ever worse according to two new, contrasting reports on the state of the network.

A survey of 17 500 AA members says road surfaces are in a worse state than they were 10 years ago, while new statistics from the Department for Transport (DfT) show that the condition of local roads is improving.

In the AA/Populus Panel survey published last week (early June 2008), 40% of respondents said the condition of the road network was much worse than 10 years ago, while only 2% thought road conditions had improved. …

The DfT report on local roads says that condition of the network has improved every year since 2000 when funding started to improve again.

Principal roads have improved from a defects index of 121.2 in 2000 to 71.3 in built up areas and 91.5 to 70.9 in non built up areas. …”

When UKMA published its report “Metric signs ahead” in 2006, a similar poll of 500 civil engineers (who design and construct the roads in metric then sign them in imperial) had 42% in favour of metric signs and 56% against. That, for me, was a surprise.

The AA Populus poll says that 8% are in favour – about 3 million people if the poll is representative of the adult population. This is also a surprise when you realise that:

* The Department for Transport has opposed the project since 1970, and in 2006 published a grossly inflated estimate of the cost.
* Successive governments since 1970 have never given public support.
* For many years, the tabloids had campaigned vigorously against all things European, including metric road signs.

Only on TV has there been any semblance of a balanced debate.

Still, it is reassuring to know that there are probably more than three million independent thinkers out there.

However, this isn’t actually very useful information for most drivers. They know how far they want to travel and want to calculate how much fuel they’ll need and how much that will cost.

The 1/x relationship (graph at http://www.mathsnet.net/graphs/curb2.html for those who’ve forgotten what it looks like) means that an increase of 10mpg may halve the amount of fuel used, or may only reduce it by less than 20% - it depends whether you’re currently getting 10mpg or 50mpg. Measuring as fuel volume divided by distance means you can directly calculate how much money you’re saving. Also, CO2 emissions correlate very closely to the amount of fuel burnt, something completely unintelligible to those who insist on using mpg.

I don’t know the history behind the convention of L/100 km but at a guess I’d say it has been adopted because the litre is a relatively large quantity for vehicle fuel consumption per km. If it were expressed as L/km then the numbers would typically be much less than one and not very convenient to work with. For example my own car uses about 7 L/100 km which is fairly typical of a small family saloon. If this were expressed in L/km it would be 0.07

I also suspect that mpg rather than gallons/mile has arisen for the same reason as the 100 km rule. If consumption were measured directly (rather than by its inverse) then we’d get figures like 0.025 (40 mpg).

The real issue for the UK is the fact that fuel is measured and sold by the litre not the outdated gallon which makes mpg awkward and inappropriate. Obviously a change to km for distance would pull everything together properly and all UK drivers would at last be able to enjoy a sensible regime of measurement for all aspects of motoring.

L/100 km makes more sense than MPG because the 100 km is a constant, where as fuel capacity is variable amongst vehicles yet fuel consumption can be the same between different vehicles. Not hard to think about. This should be made more aware of rather than just reserved for the small print on car posters! Though I don’t own a car.

It wasn’t that surprising the younger people were more in favour of imperial. Most obviously don’t travel to countries where metric is used on the roads and thus have no exposure and thus no experience. In the US and I’m sure the UK too, the younger generations are poorer then their parents and grandparents and don’t have the money to do much, least of all travel. Many young people I have talked to have never been on a vacation and many have never been more then a few hours drive from their home.

Without exposure to metric on the roads it is impossible to properly conduct a poll. It would make sense to convert Northern Ireland in a timely and economical manner as a test area to see how it affects conversion costs and attitudes. Maybe a poll of Australian and Irish drivers would prove beneficial.

I would think that since more vehicles travel between Northern Ireland and Ireland then between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, a common measurement system on the roads between the two would be more logical.

I’m sure that the greatest resistance is in England. Scotland and Wales would be more receptive to metrication. I can’t understand why these regions should not just complete metrication and let England suffer from being on the outside looking in.