The horror of metrification

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2009-10-21

Comments (2)    Join conversation

In the United Kingdom, width and height signs near bridges are invariably marked in the imperial measure of feet and inches, not always a big help to lorry (truck) drivers coming from the continent who are used to metric.

Now a proposal from the Department of Transport wants to impose a plan that would phase out the the imperial signs and replace them with dual metric and imperial. For Derek Clark, a member of the European parliament for the United Kingdom this is the "thin edge of the wedge". He sees it as European encroachment that will eventually Europeanize Britain.

Clark says he is not against putting metric measurements on the signs but wants them in smaller letters.

Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain's rail infrastructure has been complaining for years that Lorry drivers unfamiliar with the British system were responsible for a significant portion of damage to bridges due to crashes.

The Department of Transport says that more than 10% of bridge strikes involve foreign drivers, even though just 0.4% of vehicles on British roads are foreign registered.

Metric measurements are a sore point for the British, who vehemently resist any talk of posting kilometers on destination signs and have firmly resisted any talk of adapting the Euro currency which is used throughout most of Europe.

Login or sign up to receive email notification
when a comment is added to this thread.

NOTE - You can cancel at any time, and we have a strict privacy policy which forbids us from sharing your email address or other information with any third party.