Why kms?

[Ming the Merciless]

Has anyone else noticed the signs that say 3 miles to such and such a village. Then you’ll pedal for another minute and see another sign which will also say you are still 3 miles from the village. I don’t think miles is an actual unit of length. I wonder how accurate the signs are anyway, and whether they just are an approximation.

 

[GoldenLamprey]

People who have only ever done maths in base 10 systems have never developed the mental dexterity to manipulate imperial units. Those of us who use imperial units on a daily basis have no problem mentally calculating everyday things where the units are in 12's, 14's 16's etc.
Ever noticed that most youngsters who work in shops are really shite at mental arithmetic and have to look at the till all the time to tell them how much change to give the customer? That's the by-product of both metric and calculators. Deal with older people who grew up with imperial units and they are generally way better at doing maths in their heads.

Unfortunately, others never developed the mental dexterity to handle differing viewpoints.

 

[GoldenLamprey]

Some people live in the past, some in the present. We moved to metric 50 years ago, so plenty of time to get to grips with it, for those who can deal with change.

If you live in your backyard all your life, imperial will be fine. For those who travel, beyond our borders, metric is out there. Being familiar with it is useful.

 

[Slick]

I'm with you there, L for Little, Light or Large?

I thought it was length.

 

[Twilkes]

Thinking about it I honestly think that mile, yard, foot, inch and pint all being single syllable words make a difference. Kilometre, metre, centimetre and litre all take a bit longer to say and feel more clinical. I use metric for precision but tend to use imperial for rough estimates, although I had no idea there were 1760 yards in a mile, or 5280 feet. I'm 43 years old and have all my own teeth.

 

[MartinQ]

A typical UK map produced by the UK's world-respected national mapping organisation, and used by UK cyclists. Distances measured in kms, elevation in metres...

View attachment 566991

If I understand it correctly, we are supposed to translate the kms and metres back into miles and feet in case we ever see a road sign that we don't need to use, or talk to someone who has a curious emotional bond with an antiquated system of units that never made sense from the time it was introduced...

Just shows how foresighed Leonardo de Pisa was when he described the Fibonacci sequence 800 years ago. The next/previous number is your km/mile equivalent, so
5 - 8 - 13 - 21 - 34 - 55 - 89 ...

 

[vickster]

Who cares. Do what you want unless there’s a specific requirement for the alternative (legal, financial, business whatever)

 

[BoldonLad]

I've noticed a lot of cyclists in Britain talking about distances in kilometres.

Why?

Our roads and cars and stuff is all in miles. I know how far apart places are in miles. So why not use miles on your bike?

Couldn't be because kms give you bigger, more impressive numbers could it? Nah, cyclists ain't that shallow...

But seriously, why?

Could it simply be younger cyclists who are doing this, the explanation being that they are being/have been taught metric units at school (the UK was meant to go metric at some date in the past, which I forget)?

Born in 1947, I tend to "think" in imperial measures, but, it is no hardship to use Metric, I manage to achieve it without incident when travelling in mainland Europe. I even managed the switch from £sd to £p, without having a breakdown. They are only numbers.

 

[Notafettler]

Has anyone else noticed the signs that say 3 miles to such and such a village. Then you’ll pedal for another minute and see another sign which will also say you are still 3 miles from the village. I don’t think miles is an actual unit of length. I wonder how accurate the signs are anyway, and whether they just are an approximation.

If it was kilometres it would still be an approximations.
Anyway your lucky where i live you wouldn't have two signs that close together.
In fact you would be in the village before the sign for the village name would appear.
Furthermore the finger posts are hidden in the hedgerow.
AND where it is a metal posts with the pointers held on with extra large jubilee clips they tend to point in the opposite direction (wind turns them).
Your lucky Its signpost heaven where you live.

 

[BoldonLad]

I remember my dad giving me a 10 bob note to spend at a fair in the Abbey Fields in Kenilworth in the early 1960s. That was a lot of money to me at that age. I think the rides were 6d so that was enough for 20! (Different times then... I would have been less than 10 years old at the time but my parents were happy for me to clear off unsupervised for a few hours to spend the cash.)

10 shillings! Could last a week on that in 1960! Real joy as a teenager (1960-1966) was finding a ten shilling note in your jacket pocket, that you had forgotten about!

 

[Mo1959]

10 shillings! Could last a week on that in 1960! Real joy as a teenager (1960-1966) was finding a ten shilling note in your jacket pocket, that you had forgotten about!

I remember finding a ten bob note in the street and being a good girl handed it in to the local bobby.......we still had a village bobby then! Nobody claimed it so I got it back

 

[Notafettler]

when they switched from 1:63,360 (yes, really!) to 1:50,000

Why does that matter? Why does it have to be rounded up? Do you like rounding everything up?

 

[Notafettler]

10 shillings! Could last a week on that in 1960! Real joy as a teenager (1960-1966) was finding a ten shilling note in your jacket pocket, that you had forgotten about!

You "found" a 10 shilling note in your pocket? How could you not know you had 10 shillings note somewhere. I cried with joy for a week and day, when I found a 6 penny piece in a road drain. I regularly looked in them to see if any money had been washed down into them. Had to get 4 friends to help lift the drain cover off. Obviously I had to give them a penny each but I still had 2 pence for myself. Enough to buy some chips on a Wednesday as my parents only had enough money to feed me on a Monday and Friday. You must have lived in a 10 bedroom mansion and gone to Eaton.

 

[Low Gear Guy]

Won't change the grid lines. They were in km even on the old 1 inch maps. Nor will it change the contours and spot heights, they've been in metres since the early 70s when they switched from 1:63,360 (yes, really!) to 1:50,000

I have a 1:25000 map of Purbeck with the altitude in feet. This confused me as the 600m ascent seemed remarkably easy.

 

[Notafettler]

I remember finding a ten bob note in the street and being a good girl handed it in to the local bobby.......we still had a village bobby then! Nobody claimed it so I got it back

It was mine, I went to the police station to ask if anyone had handed it in. He said no. If I recall rightly he was your dad. Another bent copper.