[POLL] UK/US drivers - do you use MPH or KPH speed display?

UK/US drivers - do you use MPH or KPH speed display and why? I'm from the UK and have been using the KPH display, as guess this is what most use, but it means I really seem to have no idea how fast the car is going as my brain seems hard wired to work in MPH, even though in theory I know what a KM is, so am thinking of switching to MPH - is there any reason why this might be a bad idea?

I guess it doesn't make much difference, as it's not something I guess most drivers pay attention to, as the tacho is more important, but as I'm only using a gamepad and not a wheel, I need all the useful feedback I can get!

 

Make a 3rd option: not UK/US, because I am curious about the results, but can't see it without voting.

 

Nice i love polls

Agree! Or change this setting:
"Results are only viewable after voting."

 

Done!

 

Ah - that probably would have been better, I'll know next time! Sorry.

 

I'm the 'other' UK user that uses KPH it seems; the sooner the Imperial measurement system dies it's death the better.

 

Bit tricky here considering that every road sign is in MPH... At least we have speedos with both MPH and KPH on, though, don't think Euro ones usually have the secondary MPH scale, which must make it hard driving here!

 

Speed limits only come in a few varieties, so that is easy to mentally translate to km/h.

I even do it at home, where a 120 km/h speed limit for me means to keep the meter at 130, due to meter calibration and legal margins.

 

Also almost everyone does at least 80 MPH (130 KMH) on the motorway usually anyway! Not me of course, on no...

 

Kph...I use whatever makes sense for the game/sim I'm playing. R3E is usually kph. ATS mph. ETS kph, etc.....

 

Well in Euro Truck Simulator 2 I guess it should depend if you're driving a RHD UK truck or not

My current garage is in Prague, so it's KPH for me. Have actually been having lots of fun with ETS 2 recently, it's strangely compelling, despite the much slower pace!

 

BTW for those UK/US drivers who selected KPH, why do you go for that instead of MPH?

 

I just prefer metric, much better system. I understand both easily, so it's just a preference.

 

I must admit in the racing games, i still am always making the kph to mph conversion in my head when i check the speedo. Perhaps that's why my concentration suffers!

Although when trucking, I seem to have given in to the kph completely - I see 80 kph and i think "OK interstate speed", not "50-some mph"

Yup, really hard to argue against that. I mean, one I think is based on the length of someone's foot??? Or may as well be anyway, whereas the other based on our familiar base 10 number system - i'll take the base 10 system, please.

 

Well obviously the metric system makes sense, but living in the UK we have a weird mix of Metric and Imperial, though, so I'm used to it for some things, but not others e.g. my own weight only seems to make sense in stones (which even the dyed-in the wool Imperial System Americans don't use), a unit which my French wife finds ludicrous (typical statement - "so there are 12 inches to a foot, 16 ounces to a pound, and 14 pounds to a stone - n'importe quoi!"), and beer obviously always comes in pints (not short-changed metric sort), my height only makes sense in feet and inches, and distances and speeds have to be in miles...

 

I live in the states, so I use mph naturally.

 

KPH, because it is more precise.

 

Purely out if interest mate, what age are you? I'm 29 and of course I grew up with the same mux around me, but if I need to give my weight or height I always use kilos and centimetres (the latter gets more confused looks than the former). Beer obviously is a pints thing though, although that's another thing that our US cousins don't use (in my experience), but wine I would always measure in ml (or, you know, bottles...).

I'd love to eradicate Imperial measurements completely, it feels like we wimped out halfway through a very necessary process. Obviously things are much worse in the US, where they can't even use a standard size of paper.......

 

The metric system was implemented in the 1970's here in Canada.
Although it was a shock to many, it didn't affect people in my age group
because we had already been buying our stuff by the Gram and Kilo for years

 

The definition of the metre was a heroic enterprise, at the time.

As it was defined as 1/10,000 part of the distance between the Equator and the North Pole, they have to triangulate a sizeable distance between mountain tops accurately from North to South to determine it. From Barcelona to Paris, I think they did, in the middle of wars. Then the meter was used to define the kilogram, as the mass of a cubic decimetre of water.

The philosophy was that such definitions couldn't be manipulated by governments.

Great thinking.

Of course, because it was French thinking, it couldn't be accepted by the British.