this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
1304 points (99.4% liked)
Memes
45587 readers
1295 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I fear it.
I'm sure I could adapt, I just don't want to.
However, if there was a transition period it would be fine.
Teach it in schools, post signs for both for a while, a couple generations and boom, fully metric.
Just don't tell me the speed limit is 30 kilometers an hour, I have no frame of reference for that really.
There would for sure a transition period, otherwise it would be total chaos, not just at a personal level, but an industrial one. And I don't doubt that somepeople will continue using inches and cups until the day they die.
As for the speed limit comment, that's a almost a non-issue - practically every car on the road today either has a setting to switch from MPH to KMPH (for digital speedometers) or for analogue speedometers it will generally tend to show both. At that point you don't need a frame of reference, just make the number on your dashboard <= the number on the sign. That's it. Though as you say, it would almost certainly be a case of both units being on all the signs for a long while.
It wouldn't even take a couple generations IMO. Maybe a decade or two for official stuff to move over. I have absolutely no doubt that plenty of stubborn people will completely refuse to move over to metric for their personal lives, but that's fine tbh. No one cares in Billy over in Idaho wants to keep measuring his ingredients in tablespoons/cups/pints/etc or say it's a 20 mile drive instead of a 30km one. As long as professionals can all rely on things being in metric in professional settings