Official thinking on dual unit road signs in the 1960’s

HM Government looked at the case for and against the use of dual unit road signs as an intermediate step in the metrication of road signs in the second half of the 1960’s. Three different methods for dual unit sign conversion were evaluated and some technical issues related to dual unit signs were discussed. The findings and illustrations from the National Archive papers are presented here.

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Transport software company increases chance of errors by using dual units

Jaama, a transport software company, advertises its MyVehicle App software product on its website with images showing that it uses both kilometres and miles. 1 Using dual units within software introduces the possibility of conversion errors and unit mix-ups. There are real-world examples of errors arising from the use of dual units in transport. Some are described in this article.

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Multiple conversions for same social distances

If you thought social distancing was simple, think again. Ronnie Cohen draws attention some examples of confusing conversions. When will we learn to think metric and not convert?

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Costs of supporting dual measures

Ronnie Cohen provides us with an example from his work of the additional costs that businesses face as a result of having to provide for dual measures. Imagine how much better off we might be if all such costs in the UK economy and throughout the world could be avoided.

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The curse of conversion factors

In this article, Ronnie Cohen looks at lists of plausible conversions in both directions between imperial units still in use in the UK and metric units.

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