I seem to remember several weeks ago ARM visited Waterloo to change a sign from a metric height to an imperial height. I believe I may have seen this sign yesterday and it was barely readable. I presumed the sign had been changed by ARM because the original writing had been clearly rubbed off and the imperial feet/inches writing looked as if it had been added using permanent marker!

I could tell the sign was supposed to be imperial but the figures were unreadable. If this was your work ARM, I would say the sign is more likely to cause an accident now rather than when it was in metres. If your primary issue is safety for motorists, get it changed now.

The sign was changed by an ARM activist in August 2001 and the authorities informed immediately afterwards. They had been asked to erect a legal sign saying 6' 9", but refused to do so.

Our amended sign lasted well until this winter (i.e. for about 18 months).

The fact that the authorities haven't bothered to erect a new, legal, sign shows what little concern they have for the motoring public.

If you are concerned, Richard, please contact the Highways and Transportation Director for the London Borough of Lambeth. If you do so, that will demonstrate that you do have the concerns of the motoring public at heart rather than just wanting to spray cheap and inaccurate scattergun shots at activists upholding the law of the land.

Please post the results of your representations on this bulletin board

"...activists upholding the law of the land"

Scribbly, barely legible handwritten signs are not legal.

Those who produce them are responsible for any safety hazards that result from them.

To paraphrase the previous poster:

"Those who produce and erect illegal metric signs are responsible for the safety hazards that result from them..."


As was proved by the Adam Doggett case, where Broxbourne Borough Council were forced to pay out £442 because a car driver misunderstood an illegal low bridge sign illegally erected in metres only, scraping his car roof and only being able to get away from the bridge by letting his tyres down (location: Dobbs Weir, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire)

The Doggit case resulted in damage to a vehicle. No one was hurt.

Chapter and verse on the case doesn't make verfy impressive reading.

If he wasn't sure he could pass underneath why did he drive on?

I accept for the time being that height and width signs cannot be purely in metres bacause perhaps not everyone knows the height of their vehicles in metres. Likewise though, I believe that not everyone would know their vehicle height in feet/inches, i.e. foreign drivers. That is why it seems perfectly logical for say 5 years from now to have all height and width signs in dual metric and imperial measurements. After this 5 year period, everyone would have learnt their vehicle size in metres and the feet/inch could be axed. Simple.

Simple?

Expensive

Richard:

Ask a teenager his height!

You're losing the point, and the argument.

Ask anyone how much a loaf of bread was in 1970 and they might have said a shilling. Didn't stop us scrapping the shilling in favour of the much more user-friendly decimalisation did it?

Ask anyone how much a loaf of bread was in 1970 and they might have said a shilling. Didn't stop us scrapping the shilling in favour of the much more user-friendly decimalisation did it?

What I am saying is let's have dual metric and imperial measurements on ALL height/width signs for the time being. A decision on if/when the feet and inches should be got rid of completely can be made in the future.

I'm too young to remember shillings but there's one major difference:

LSD and £p were not mixed - they could not be - its either one or the other. Now I realise that the two shilling coin became the 10p but it was no longer "two shillings". You cannot mix pre-dec and dec coinage, you can only "call" the old coins new names. This is not true of measuring things - both systems can mix.

You could easily say "look at that 200ft tree 150 metres to your left" and it would actually mean something.

I've never liked the equation of money with measuring it always sounds like losing the argument.

On the pro-choice side I could lose the argument by claiming that "time" is not metric - but I don't think I've lost yet! ;)

BTW Richard, I *have* noticed that your points are getting much more balanced (something you've raised on another thread). Does this mean that you are warming somewhat to our cause?

I'm hoping that you may be suprised that most on my side do not want to "get rid of metric" as if it were something inferior...

I am not warming to imperial. I am just trying to be balanced when talking about newspapers because I would like to see people writing to them whatever their views.

I think I have to take back my last post after seeing the "observer" debate and your involvement.

Just shows that simple text can fool!