Here in Ireland we changed from mph to km/h in 2005.
Most things, including distance signs, had been moving to metric since the early 1970s, so this was the last big visible step.
It had actually been very awkward to have speed limits in miles and distance signs in km. If you're on a Motorway doing 120 and you're going 200km, at least you now know it will take roughly 100 mins. Trying to do that calculation with mixture of metric distances and imperial speeds was very unintuitive.
The major speed limits changed:
30mph zones (urban) - became 50km/h
40mph zones - became 60km/h
60mph (N-roads [highways?] - became 100km/h
70mph (Motorway [expressway M and some N roads] became 120km/h
The general speed limit on secondary roads was reduced from 60mph to 80km/h
Various other limits are used, like city centre/town centres are often 30km/h and you'll get other odd limits.
It took a few weeks to get used to it.
35,000 signs were replaced and 25,000 extra were added. They just installed the signs over a few weeks, they were covered had loads of county & city council and roads agency people ready to do the switch over one weekend. New signs unveiled and old ones either removed or had blanking stickers applied until they could be.
Existing cars have had dual mph and kph speedometers for several decades, so there was backwards compatibility and cars from 2005 on are kmh only speedometers, the same as continental Europe.
Within a few weeks you just tend to get a feel for it and mph seems very strange when I encounter it On trips to the UK.
Most things, including distance signs, had been moving to metric since the early 1970s, so this was the last big visible step.
It had actually been very awkward to have speed limits in miles and distance signs in km. If you're on a Motorway doing 120 and you're going 200km, at least you now know it will take roughly 100 mins. Trying to do that calculation with mixture of metric distances and imperial speeds was very unintuitive.
The major speed limits changed:
30mph zones (urban) - became 50km/h
40mph zones - became 60km/h
60mph (N-roads [highways?] - became 100km/h
70mph (Motorway [expressway M and some N roads] became 120km/h
The general speed limit on secondary roads was reduced from 60mph to 80km/h
Various other limits are used, like city centre/town centres are often 30km/h and you'll get other odd limits.
It took a few weeks to get used to it.
35,000 signs were replaced and 25,000 extra were added. They just installed the signs over a few weeks, they were covered had loads of county & city council and roads agency people ready to do the switch over one weekend. New signs unveiled and old ones either removed or had blanking stickers applied until they could be.
Existing cars have had dual mph and kph speedometers for several decades, so there was backwards compatibility and cars from 2005 on are kmh only speedometers, the same as continental Europe.
Within a few weeks you just tend to get a feel for it and mph seems very strange when I encounter it On trips to the UK.