2002-11-02 Han,
I hope you did not send this yet! The recommended speed for 60 murphys is 100 km/h, nor 95 km/h. !00 is a nice, neat and rational number. No 65 km/h. Either 60 or 70. Choose numbers that end in zeros. No fives. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Han Maenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, 2002-11-02 13:16 Subject: [USMA:23060] Letter to the Editor > I am going to send this message to the Irish Times. > > Madam, > > I saw in Saturday's Irish Times the following recapitulation of speed limits > in Ireland: "And just for the record, the speed limit is 70 m.p.h. or 112 > k.p.h. on motorways and dual carriage ways; 60 m.p.h. or 96 k.p.h. on urban > stretches and outside built-up areas and 30 m.p.h. or 48 k.p.h. in > built-upareas." > No visitor's car with a metric speedometer can hold such funny speeds. > Sometimes metric values like that are used to ridicule the metric system. A > sensible conversion > would have been: 70 m.p.h. = 110 km/h; 60 m.p.h. = 95 km/h and 30 m.p.h. = > 50 km/h, and these may well be among the future Irish limits. "Soft" > metrication, like 30 m.p.h. becomes 48 km/h, is disastrous. It is to be > hoped that metrication will not be used to lower the limits, just to make > them sensible. In fact, 50 km/h in residential streets is too high; it > should be 30 km/h, so that many of the old '30' signs can be re-used. And on > splendid through-roads 50 or even 65 km/h (the old 40 m.p.h.) is too low. > Make it 80 or 90 km/h and up to 120 km/h on the emerging Irish motorway > network. Another article on this metrication issue in Friday's IT, used the > word 'confusion'. I would not think so. Metric road distance signs have been > present in Ireland for many years and many Irish motorists drive in > mainlaind Europe which is metric. Almost all Irish cars have a double > speedometer, and when metric comes in all new cars will have metric-only > speedometers. In the contrary, it will end the confusion that now reigns on > Irish roads, as in a sense, it will be a return to one system of > measurements, only it will be metric and not Imperial. And last, but not > least, I have to mention that the international and correct symbol for > kilometre per hour is km/h; k.p.h is deprecated. > > Yours faithfully, > > Han Maenen Nijmegen, > The Netherlands > > One thing do Irish and Dutch residential streets have in common. A speed > sign saying '30' at the entrance. Only, with us is it means 30 km/h, in > Ireland it means 30 miles per hour, which is too high in my opinion. That > would be a joke, a member of the BWMA, F2M, Inch Perfect or the UKIP driving > in the Netherlands at 30 mph in such streets. That would mean a new kind of > 'metric martyrs', if stopped and prosecuted. It would cost them dearly, a > high fine and a time without a licence. > > Han > Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands > >
