8 ms·

What country do they drive in MPH with the steering wheel on the right side of the car? I've heard a lot of references to "miles" in British culture, but I ass

What country do they drive in MPH with the steering wheel on the right side of the car? I've heard a lot of references to "miles" in British culture, but I assumed that was habits of older people. I thought the UK was all metric by now?

guntherhermann 3y ago
Yeah, this'll be the UK. We use a mix of imperial and metric, so you'll see "300m to next service station" and also "30 mph" speed limits :). People typically weigh themselves in stone and lbs, yet the food we buy is weighed in grams
- folli 3y ago
  The UK. Europe's last stronghold against the French Revolution's dictate of the metric system.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  I often convert these new fangled units back into old money. Chains per fluid ounce (Ch/FlOz) is so much easier to comprehend. I jest but that isn't as mad as our pre-decimalization currency. We were still spending coins that called themselves a shilling and calling them five pence (and 2s as 10p) for quite a few years afterwards.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    Fun fact: chains and furlongs are the archaic intermediary unit that get you from our smallest unit (inches) to our largest unit (miles) in a way that isn't completely insane (i.e. "simply 5280 feet to the mile"). It's really: - 12 inches to the foot - 3 feet to the yard - 22 yards to the chain - 10 chains to the furlong - 8 furlongs to the mile Using even more archaic units we can simplify further: - 8 inches to the link - 100 links to the chain - 10 chains to the furlong - 8 furlongs to the mile And 1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong, or 10 square chains.
    - gerdesj 3y ago
      Are you calling me archaic? A rod, pole or perch. A rod was 12 feet and it was the width of the land ploughed in a day. A furlough was the length. Roughly.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I think Rosie weighed in at 19 stone, but maybe she was Australian... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XAXzWt5wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XAXzWt5wc
- pacifika 3y ago
  In Scotland it’s kgs
jcdavis 3y ago
Definitely not. Having your fuel economy measured in MPG but having your fuel tank size & fillups measured in L is always a fun game.
- mikestew 3y ago
  That’s called “an American drives to Canada”. Is $4/litre expensive? Wait, before you answer, those are also Canadian dollars, so don’t forget the exchange rate. Now, how much, using U. S. dollars, to fill up an eight gallon motorcycle tank?
- qingcharles 3y ago
  And those gallons are different gallons to the American ones too...!
- ralferoo 3y ago
  I have my car set to display L/100km, but that's mostly because it's a hybrid and so kW/100km is more logical than the inverse and it makes sense to have them both operating the same way. My previous car didn't have an economy reading anyway, so my only frame of reference before was calculating pence per mile rather than MPG. L/100km seems logical and I had got used to it in a matter of weeks. Mine is generally around 5-6L/100km on long, mostly petrol journeys, so this is now my new mental benchmark, and it's also trivial to go from this to pence per litre, and not much more to get to the pence per mile that I thought in before. I guess my brain has got good at multiplying by 1.6 as I use km for running and cycling too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
If one zooms in on the image, the words "Evesham, United King..." can be read (top right-ish of the display).
qingcharles 3y ago
Metric in many things, and I was taught metric exclusively through school in the early 80s in England. Road signs and limits all still in miles exclusively. People still refer to each other in feet and inches although official stuff often wants cms. TVs still in inches. It's not as bad as America, because Brits have a very solid understand of metric and tend to use it whenever we can, but still needs work :(
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, in the US, we learned both systems. Rulers had inches and centimeters. All packaging had both units. All highways signs had both units. I don't know why we "regressed," other than to say that when you live with both units, you realize that some metric units are silly, and some metric units make a lot more sense. More specifically, requiring that all units be merely powers of 10 of each other makes it very hard to use the most appropriate unit for the scale you need. (Don't believe me? Why do we have 24 hours in a day? 7 days in a week? 356.25 days in a year?) IE, it's a lot easier to estimate short distances using feet or millimeters; but kilometers makes a lot of sense for long distances. Understanding "the weather" makes more sense in Fahrenheit, but general science makes more sense in Celsius.
- tjohns 3y ago
  > because Brits have a very solid understand of metric As an American, I was taught metric in elementary school 30 years ago. It's used throughout education for science classes. I can't imagine there's many Americans who don't understand the metric system. We just don't use it for anything outside the sciences, for whatever reason.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    And soda bottle sizes
- vel0city 3y ago
  I definitely acknowledge I don't live there so I can't truly know, but I feel like I'd just prefer to live in a region where everything is consistent instead of constantly changing units all the time. We want to talk meters? Sure, We want to talk miles? That's fine. But something like "Ipswitch is 90km from Cambridge, you're going 40 miles per hour, how long till you get there?" just seems annoying to me, more annoying than just saying its like 55 miles and you're going 40 miles an hour so it'll be just under 50 minutes or so. Or like a recipe calls for 1 pint of something that you've got 500mL containers of. Do you bother opening another 500mL container for that last 68mL?
npteljes 3y ago
British TV shop "Supersize vs Superskinny" ran between 2008 and 2014, and they still referred to the weight of people in "stones". Apparently legislation still contains imperial units too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

guntherhermann 3y ago

Yeah, this'll be the UK. We use a mix of imperial and metric, so you'll see "300m to next service station" and also "30 mph" speed limits :). People typically weigh themselves in stone and lbs, yet the food we buy is weighed in grams

folli 3y ago
The UK. Europe's last stronghold against the French Revolution's dictate of the metric system.
gerdesj 3y ago
I often convert these new fangled units back into old money. Chains per fluid ounce (Ch/FlOz) is so much easier to comprehend. I jest but that isn't as mad as our pre-decimalization currency. We were still spending coins that called themselves a shilling and calling them five pence (and 2s as 10p) for quite a few years afterwards.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  Fun fact: chains and furlongs are the archaic intermediary unit that get you from our smallest unit (inches) to our largest unit (miles) in a way that isn't completely insane (i.e. "simply 5280 feet to the mile"). It's really: - 12 inches to the foot - 3 feet to the yard - 22 yards to the chain - 10 chains to the furlong - 8 furlongs to the mile Using even more archaic units we can simplify further: - 8 inches to the link - 100 links to the chain - 10 chains to the furlong - 8 furlongs to the mile And 1 acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong, or 10 square chains.
  - gerdesj 3y ago
    Are you calling me archaic? A rod, pole or perch. A rod was 12 feet and it was the width of the land ploughed in a day. A furlough was the length. Roughly.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I think Rosie weighed in at 19 stone, but maybe she was Australian... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XAXzWt5wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XAXzWt5wc
pacifika 3y ago
In Scotland it’s kgs

jcdavis 3y ago

Definitely not. Having your fuel economy measured in MPG but having your fuel tank size & fillups measured in L is always a fun game.

mikestew 3y ago
That’s called “an American drives to Canada”. Is $4/litre expensive? Wait, before you answer, those are also Canadian dollars, so don’t forget the exchange rate. Now, how much, using U. S. dollars, to fill up an eight gallon motorcycle tank?
qingcharles 3y ago
And those gallons are different gallons to the American ones too...!
ralferoo 3y ago
I have my car set to display L/100km, but that's mostly because it's a hybrid and so kW/100km is more logical than the inverse and it makes sense to have them both operating the same way. My previous car didn't have an economy reading anyway, so my only frame of reference before was calculating pence per mile rather than MPG. L/100km seems logical and I had got used to it in a matter of weeks. Mine is generally around 5-6L/100km on long, mostly petrol journeys, so this is now my new mental benchmark, and it's also trivial to go from this to pence per litre, and not much more to get to the pence per mile that I thought in before. I guess my brain has got good at multiplying by 1.6 as I use km for running and cycling too.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

If one zooms in on the image, the words "Evesham, United King..." can be read (top right-ish of the display).

qingcharles 3y ago

Metric in many things, and I was taught metric exclusively through school in the early 80s in England. Road signs and limits all still in miles exclusively. People still refer to each other in feet and inches although official stuff often wants cms. TVs still in inches. It's not as bad as America, because Brits have a very solid understand of metric and tend to use it whenever we can, but still needs work :(

gwbas1c 3y ago
When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, in the US, we learned both systems. Rulers had inches and centimeters. All packaging had both units. All highways signs had both units. I don't know why we "regressed," other than to say that when you live with both units, you realize that some metric units are silly, and some metric units make a lot more sense. More specifically, requiring that all units be merely powers of 10 of each other makes it very hard to use the most appropriate unit for the scale you need. (Don't believe me? Why do we have 24 hours in a day? 7 days in a week? 356.25 days in a year?) IE, it's a lot easier to estimate short distances using feet or millimeters; but kilometers makes a lot of sense for long distances. Understanding "the weather" makes more sense in Fahrenheit, but general science makes more sense in Celsius.
tjohns 3y ago
> because Brits have a very solid understand of metric As an American, I was taught metric in elementary school 30 years ago. It's used throughout education for science classes. I can't imagine there's many Americans who don't understand the metric system. We just don't use it for anything outside the sciences, for whatever reason.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  And soda bottle sizes
vel0city 3y ago
I definitely acknowledge I don't live there so I can't truly know, but I feel like I'd just prefer to live in a region where everything is consistent instead of constantly changing units all the time. We want to talk meters? Sure, We want to talk miles? That's fine. But something like "Ipswitch is 90km from Cambridge, you're going 40 miles per hour, how long till you get there?" just seems annoying to me, more annoying than just saying its like 55 miles and you're going 40 miles an hour so it'll be just under 50 minutes or so. Or like a recipe calls for 1 pint of something that you've got 500mL containers of. Do you bother opening another 500mL container for that last 68mL?

npteljes 3y ago

British TV shop "Supersize vs Superskinny" ran between 2008 and 2014, and they still referred to the weight of people in "stones". Apparently legislation still contains imperial units too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units