Dear Han, John, and All, John's right. All of the Australian signs were changed to values with values rounded to have 0 (zero) endings. It worked fine for us.
Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia on 2002-11-04 01.53, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 2002-11-03 > > All you want to do is suggest the use of rounded numbers that end in a zero. > Let the local authorities decide what speed is best for certain roads. The > people will accept the change more easily and quicker if the numbers are > neat and rational. > > You want too make suggestions that make SI look better than FFU. If you > don't, the public will hate SI because they will have to deal with funny > numbers. The BWMA would love to see irrational metric values. Then they > have an argument for saying that FFU is more user friendly. > > Canada, and I'm sure the other countries did the same, changed their 60 > murphys to 100 km/h. There were no problems. NOBODY has a speed limit of > 95 km/h. Absolutely no body. Every place I have been to the speed limits > always end in zero. Use the KISS principle: Keep It Simple! > > John > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Han Maenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Saturday, 2002-11-02 16:47 > Subject: [USMA:23068] Re: Letter to the Editor > > >> I have not sent it yet; I will change it a bit. But as long as the speed >> limit is 60 mph it is risky to advice people to drive 100 km/h; that is >> simply against the law. More than 2 km/h too fast often is enough. When > the >> change comes, then 60 mph should become 100 km/h. The present speed limit > of >> 40 mph has the same problem. 70 km/h is too fast and leads to prosecution > if >> stopped by the police, or Gardai in Ireland. The new limit could indeed >> become 70 km/h. I will send it as follows (see below), >> >> Han >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "kilopascal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Sent: Saturday, 2002-11-02 21:04 >> Subject: [USMA:23062] Re: Letter to the Editor >> >> >> 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. 100 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-up >> areas." >> 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. >> Until metrication makes its debut a sensible conversion is: 70 m.p.h. = > 110 >> km/h; 60 m.p.h. = 95 km/h and 30 m.p.h. = 50 km/h; the future Irish > limits >> should be rounded to tens of kilometres, just as they are now in tens of >> miles. These, for instance, are the Dutch speed limits in kilometres per >> hour: 30 in residential streets, 50 on through roads in built up areas, 80 >> on country roads, 100 to 120 km/h on motorways, the latter according to >> motorway conditions. "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 70 km/h (rounded up from 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 metric mainlaind Europe. 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 >> >> <snip> >> >
