UK people, what are you doing over there?

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The sensible world: 1 kilometer = 1,000 meters = 100,000 centimeters = 1,000,000 mm, etc.
Sensible, easy to follow, linear.

America: 1 mile = 1,760 yards = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inches = 506,880 eights of an inch, etc.
Random, arbitrary, made up with complete disregard for linearity.

USA does more weird stuff like ounces, Fahrenheit, and in Canada we get a lot of US news stations and see them use animals as units of measurements often enough (wtf?! lol), etc. but all I'm really curious about for this thread is distance as it relates to speed.

What I'm trying to understand is... what are you guys doing in the UK?
I watch a lot of motorcycle content, like every day, and every day I come across at least one UK rider talking about speed measured in miles.

Have UK motorcyclists denounced the metric system? Has the UK become the 51st state?
I feel like there's some background cultural context to this that I'm not aware of and hoping a fellow motorcyclist can best explain it to me. Teach me? :)
 
Adrian said:
The sensible world: 1 kilometer = 1,000 meters = 100,000 centimeters = 1,000,000 mm, etc.
Sensible, easy to follow, linear.

America: 1 mile = 1,760 yards = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inches = 506,880 eights of an inch, etc.
Random, arbitrary, made up with complete disregard for linearity.

USA does more weird stuff like ounces, Fahrenheit, and in Canada we get a lot of US news stations and see them use animals as units of measurements often enough (wtf?! lol), etc. but all I'm really curious about for this thread is distance as it relates to speed.

What I'm trying to understand is... what are you guys doing in the UK?
I watch a lot of motorcycle content, like every day, and every day I come across at least one UK rider talking about speed measured in miles.

Have UK motorcyclists denounced the metric system? Has the UK become the 51st state?
I feel like there's some background cultural context to this that I'm not aware of and hoping a fellow motorcyclist can best explain it to me. Teach me? :)
Click to expand...
Hi Adrian!

I live in Ireland and I also work in construction / electrical contracting and I use imperial/MPH only when measuring speed funnily enough. To make matters more confusing In North of Ireland road speed signs are MPH (because technically its UK) however in South of Ireland they are in KM haha

Everything in else (construction related) I use metric (millimeters etc, including weight!)
 
On the subject, but also off topic, our nuclear deterrent submarines, the ones with the Trident missiles... the front and back thirds are metric, but the middle third is imperial. This is because all the kit in the middle is for the missile systems which is American.
On subs we don't use MPH or KPH, we use knots :D
 
I would say more than just length...

The sensible world:
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters = 100,000 centimeters = 1,000,000 mm, etc.
but also
1 KILOgram = 1000 grams = 1,000,000 miligrams
1 KILOwatt = 1000 watt and so on.
and the other way round
1000 KILObyte = 1Megabyte = 0.001 Gigabyte
1000 Kilowatt = 1 Megawatt = 0.001 Gigawatt
Every single measure works the same way

BUT... in the UK and States - stones, yards, miles, inches, feet, ounce, pints and what not... What a mess ;)
Not even mentioning thread standards which could be simply metric, but instead it is UNC, UNF, BSW, BSF and what not again ;)
Funnily enough - they still use liters sometimes, grams, or bytes and few others ;)

But hey, most people say - it is important TRADITION ;)
 
HippoDrone said:
On the subject, but also off topic, our nuclear deterrent submarines, the ones with the Trident missiles... the front and back thirds are metric, but the middle third is imperial. This is because all the kit in the middle is for the missile systems which is American.
On subs we don't use MPH or KPH, we use knots :D
Click to expand...
Wait, that’s so silly!
 
When you ask UK people for their weight, many will reply to you in "stone". Flattened me when I first heard it. When asked how much a stone is, they didn't even know :rolleyes:
 
PhilTonic said:
When you ask UK people for their weight, many will reply to you in "stone". Flattened me when I first heard it. When asked how much a stone is, they didn't even know :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Ugh, huge pet peve that is. Because I’m in hospitals often(for my son) I’m so used to saying kgs as that’s what they use. So when people say lbs it’s easy to just x2.2 so Stone is such a weird weight measurement to me personally. ‍♂️
 
Apologies for bumping an old thread lol but even in Canada we are highly influenced by the US! Our roads and most speedo's are in KPH, but everybody lifts in lbs, we tell our doctors and only our most closest friends our weight in LBS. In construction, we would typically measure by inches/feet. Our ovens are in fahrenheit. I think the only thing metric we often use is really the roads.

It was weird moving to Asia because all of a sudden I am being asked my height and weight and I'm responding "6 feet 180 lbs" which gets you a confused look half of the time (even in hospitals). Used to it now, and finally fully converted to a more sensible cult (metric) whereas when I was in Canada, only my tippy toes were dipped in metric ideology. Fascinating stuff. Now when I go back to Canada and I'm asked how much I weight, or more embarrassing, how much I lift, I sound like a snob with "XYZ kilos" :D
 
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