ffjaydee

I am wondering if the speedohead registers both miles per hour and kilometers per hour. Usually there is just a button you press to change it over!

JayDee

MazdaMan182

If that's true, you lucky Canadians can get out of speeding tickets. All you have to do is show him that it was in mph instead of kilometers ("by accident"), hehe...

RX-8 Zoomster

LOL!

I can see the opposite happening here in the US. The highway patrol stops you on the interstate in a 65 zone. "Son, I have you clocked at 10 mph over the speed limit". You answer, "But, officer your radar is wrong, my speedometer is showing 100" (you meaning 100kmh or 62mph, and he thinks 100mph). He replies, "I guess your right", as he grins and writes you the ticket for being 35 over.

You know the rest of the story, explaining yourself in court trying to prevent them from confiscating your license. :D

rotarynews.com

Yep, there is a button on the gauge pod to convert it from MPH to KM/H There is a second button that is the trip-reset button. I can't remember which is which, but this button was missing from the pre-prods we drove in January, but were there in the production cars we drove at the short lead a few weeks ago.

canzoomer

Just a small nit to pick.
Metric IS the standard.
The only exception in the world is the USA

TJRX8

How about it U.K. people??? Speak up. I know you guys use MPH as well.

TJRX8

Hopefully the judge will be "Metrically challenged".

canzoomer

Well, if we look at the Mazda UK site, under specs, some things pop out quickly:
http://www.mazdarx8.co.uk/upclose/specs/specs2.asp

Fuel consumption
10.8L/100km
11.4L/100km

Top Speed (km/h) 235

Edge

Actually UK switched a while back. Even the US has "officially" switched. Not sure why we haven't actually gone through the pain for it yet.

c170673

NO we still use mph and all the road signs are in miles.

Which is strange really as everything I design (being a road designer) is in kilometres.

Chris

Edge

what about basic measurements? inches or cm?

i think it's time to call it, i've been slammed twice and wrong multiple times tonight.

c170673

All measurements are in metric,

millimetres
grammes
litres

all except speed limits, road distances and fuel consumption (miles per gallon - even though filling stations only sell in litres)

Ireland is even stranger, their speed limits are in mph, the cars all have odometers that read miles but all of the road signs are in kilometres......

Chris

8_wannabe

Does going metric mean to have to put all your r's and e's backwards? "I went the the theatre in the centre?"

c170673

NOt only that it means you have to put U's in all the right places.

Colour
Harbour

Funny language english


Chris :D

eccles

... and restore your S's to their rightful place in words like rationalise, realise, bastardise, improvise, etc.

Oh, and stop making ridiculous verbs from nouns that are already derived from perfectly good nouns: a burglar is a person who burgles or commits burglary. He doesn't burglarize. *shudder*

And WTF is "wellness"? Is is anything like "health"?

pelucidor

The UK is pretty mixed up. In the 70's they ALMOST went metric. At school in the 70's we learned to measure in grams and kilograms, Centigrade, cm and meters, cc and liters etc. But in the real world everything was still miles, lbs, oz, inches, feet, miles etc. At school we had a competition to find the most bizarre method to measure speed - my favourite was furlongs per fortnight. Nowadays everything but speed limits are metric - probably because there might be a few hundred cars in the UK which only have a mph dial and their owners would never be able to figure out speed limits in kph. Maybe in another 30 years this will change too.

Thank god the currency went from 240 pence in the pound (12 pence (d)=1shilling(s), 20 shillings=1 pound(£) etc and amounts written as £4 2s 6d) to 100 pence in the pound in 1967. The pre-decimal system was the most staggeringly complex and pointless currency ever devised although some older people still miss it:

English currency was made up of Pounds, Shillings & Pence, a very simple currency system as I shall explain. Following the demise of the Viking Farthing, we had a small coin called a half penny to which there were 480 to the Pound. 12 pennies made a shilling & 12 half pennies were known as a sixpence.

We had three penny bits, florins, and half crowns which were 2 shillings & sixpence. A crown was 5 bob & the smallest paper note was 10 bob, two of which made a pound. There was only one peculiar exception, that of a guinea, this was 21 shillings allowing the auctioneer to make his 5 % commission by paying the customer in pounds.

See here for more info on old British currency.

Brought to you by the master of off-topic...

Boozehound

... but how many rods to the hog's head can your car achieve?

FritzMan

While I can't speak for the majority of Canadians, despite being officially metric there's still a lot of reference to the English system. For example, I always view mileage in MPG, short distances in mm, medium distances in inches/feet/yards, and distances longer than 100 meters I use kilometers. Large volume is in liters (unless it's beer, then it's pints and kegs :D), smaller volume is sometimes in ounces. Speed is always in kph unless it's really high, then it becomes MPH. Temperature, when it's hot is usually expressed in Celsius but when it's cold it's always in Celsius. Weight is almost always quoted in pounds.

eccles

We were living in the UK at that time. I remember that they completely neglected that fact that there were thousands of sixpenny vending machines around the country that now had no way to accept the new currency because there was no 2.5p coin to replace the sixpence.

When Australia went to decimal currency in 1966, they did it in a much more sensible fashion, making the new A$ equal to 10/- (ten shillings, or 0.5 pounds) in the old money. Thus one shilling became 10 cents, 6d became 5c, etc. Made the mental math much easier, but of course there was no way that Jolly Old England would ever ditch the Pound, so the British populace had to jump through hoops.

Quick_lude

So very true.. For some reason 200lbs has much more "meaning" for me than 82kg..

TJRX8

wrong..as a UK member verified.

TJRX8

Actually that would be about 12.5 Stone!

Racer X-8

How many pounds are in a ton?

RX-8 Zoomster

A U.S. ton is 2000 lbs.

ChrisW

That's far too sensible. A British ton is 2240 pounds, or 160 stone.

On the plus side though, 2240 pounds translates to just over 1016 kg, so it's actually very close to being a metric ton (or tonne) which is 1000 kg.