Well, it finally arrived. Most of the signs were up several days in advance, and on the day itself, all the MPH signs were replaced by km/h.
The changeover went very smoothly. No cases of nutters doing 60 MPH down a road marked for 60 km/h, and no increased rate of accidents. Most of the feedback taken by news journalists was positive. There were some criticisms, the two main ones being: 1. Criticism of the actual speed limits on some roads. According to Conor Faughnan of the AA (and a member of the government appointed committee that drew up the proposals) "a major opportunity was lost" in correcting many anomalous limits. This was purely down to local authorities. They had all been instructed to do a review of limits within their areas last year, and the AA sent each a list of roads where the limit was inappropriately low. In the majority of these cases, the local authorities refused to change them, so a stupid imperial limit got replaced by a stupid metric limit. The previous Minister (who actually set this in motion) had already forced one authority to back down by threatening to take away its power to set limits. Unfortunately, the present incumbent lacked the bottle to do this. In other areas, locals were suprised when 80 km/h limits appeared near schools. Many hadn't realised the old limit was even higher (60 MPH). Again, down to the local authority. 2. There were some criticism that the metric readings in many car odometers was too small to read. However, the reply to both such criticisms I saw expressed in a newsgroups was on the lines that if you can't see these, you probably shouldn't be driving anyway (not by me). I could not find any instances of people complaining that the units should have stayed in MPH. Overall, this was a highly visible step, and very successfully implemented. The concentration of people's attention on speed limits may also help to end the remaining anomolous limits. I'd like to add my personal thanks to people on this list who wrote in the past to the Dept of Transport, or to Irish newspapers, or who simply supported through this newsgroup the campaign to have this change finally implemented. For those of you in the US and UK, I wish you the best of luck with your own campaigns, and I hope this victory provides you with some small boost. Regards to All. --------------------------------------------------------- Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie EuroKom | Tel: +353 (1) 296-9696 A2, Nutgrove Office Park | Fax: +353 (1) 296-9697 Rathfarnham | Disclaimer: This is not a disclaimer Dublin 14 | Tip: "Friends don't let friends do Unix !" Ireland
