** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender ** I know that in earlier years he police had a casual attitude to speeding on motorways. In 1983 a colleague of mine was stopped for doing 103 mph. He was told that since he was driving in a safe manner (ie proper lane discipline, proper signal etc), the police would be charging him with driving at 96 mph as driving at 100 mph would automatically trigger a "dangerous driving" charge as well which they felt would be unjustified.
Today one would be hard-pressed to drive from Edinburgh to Bristol in 3h35 - the roads are just too busy! -----Original Message----- From: USMA <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Michael Payne Sent: 19 July 2023 16:28 To: USMA List Server <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA 1955] Confusion on Units ** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender ** For your newsletter. My sister lives in Australia and visited me recently, she related a visit she'd made to the UK in the year 2000. She was in Edinburgh Scotland and had to drive to Bristol to visit someone. She rented a car and headed off, having been told it would take about 7 hours to do the 587 km trip. She arrived early, the journey took about 3h35. She had a discussion with the friend in Bristol about how she could do this in the time it took? She then realized she had been doing 100 mph because she had forgotten it was miles in the UK and she thought it was km/h on the speedo, 100 km/h was normal in Australia, so she guessed it was the same in the UK. She cruised along quite happily at 100 mph (160 km/h) thinking it was 100 km/h, no one stopped her and she never gave it a thought until she arrived early, in record time. Normally speed limits on motorways in the UK do not have posted speed limits, it’s assumed everyone knows they are 70 mph (112 km/h). If the police had been around that day I’m sure she would have been in trouble, but no one noticed. Easy to do if you are used to only metric units. I’m sure there are millions of confused people from around the globe who visit the UK and USA who may well do the same thing. Mike Payne France _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
