Watched the video. Wow, that accent took a bit to decipher. I still didn’t hear the reason why the US didn’t switch.
After doing a quick search, the reason seems to be that there’s no compelling reason to change to justify the cost and disruption, and that the metric system isn’t superior.
I did learn the metric system in school.
She said the problem was that the change over wasn’t compulsory.
That’s a difference in culture. Making anything compulsory on the federal level isn’t easy to do for a variety of reasons that people often value here.
The imperial system is not fit for purpose - except where the purpose is to provide unit of measure that, through familiarity, some people can readily relate to a given measure. That is its only benefit - and only for some.
So some people see themselves as, say, five foot seven inches and eight stone nine pounds. They recognise this as they can refer to another who is six foot and twelve stone and readily understand the scale of the difference. Same with knowing the next town is 10 miles away and the other nearby town is 16 miles away.
But because they have no need to work out the weight of 7 people who weigh eight stone and nine pounds they see no problem with this arcane and complex system. Nor do they have the need to work out how far one third of the way to nearest town is in yards. But I can instantly tell you that a third of the way to a town 10 kilometres away is 3,333 metres.
So its simply through familiarity, and then for them ready comparison, that some people prefer miles and other out of date measures. Anything beyond the simplest calculation is nearly impossible to do in your head. Drop miles and pints and after a couple of years they will be forgotten.
Not to mention that Britain and the USA don’t agree on liquid measure. Years ago I bought a US made “quart” vacuum flask expecting it to hold slightly over 1 litre but didn’t realise the US pint was smaller than the UK pint so it held less than the Chinese 1L flask. I was very disappointed and felt robbed.
A US quart is something like 0.9 litres whereas a UK quart is 1.1 litres (this is roughly right - not exact)
BTW I noticed recently that the same US made brand’s flask is now 1 litre so they have got better which indicates that the video must be correct that the US Manufacturers now have to make two products for the domestic and overseas market.
Even stranger is the mental disconnect we have. Petrol is bought in litres and has done for years. But a car’s economic performance is done in miles per gallon. So you’ve got to work out how many gallons you bought when you put 50 litres into your car, then work out how far it will take you. The funniest bit of this is that 30 mpg (common car performance) is a much simpler 10 km/litre.
That sounds like too much mental arithmetic for me…I’m glad I don’t drive! But then I suppose, like anything, you get used to it in time.
Yes. that petrol situation needs sorting out. A gallon is £5.86 and a Litre is only £1.55, we need it sorted so we can all save some cash 
No wonder the younger generation are going soft in the head, everything is made too easy so they don’t have to think and use their brains. Everything has to be spoon fed to them
We don’t measure fuel consumption that way, it is “litres per 100 km” which I initially thought was a daft concept but have since come to realise how useful it actually is.
As an example my car uses about 10.1 litres per 100 clicks so if I have travelled 340km then I will need about 34 litres of fuel to fill up. I also know that my 72 litre tank will take me about 700km before I really need to worry about refuelling.
Of course there is a spreadsheet which gives you every measurement you might want:
The blue bits are averages but they include a lot of towing, the yellow is what I enter.
Actually that is easily sorted, just change to using US gallons because that will reduce your fuel cost while still retaining terms your countrymen (and women) understand, though, it has to be mentioned, your car’s fuel economy will suffer.
My spreadsheet is not that fuel focused Bruce, once a vehicle is purchased, you are stuck with whatever fuel consumption is it’s characteristic, I have to record my daily miles, and how much fuel I stick in which is summarised monthly so, I get to see retrospectively how the fuel price change affects me in financial terms, there is nothing I can do to alter this, just document it
It has on occasions saved me a modest sum of money, for example many years ago I had a Mitsubishi Starwagon (carbi, no electronics) but the spreadsheet showed a sudden and expensive increase in fuel consumption when there was still hardly any noticeable change in performance.
The problem was pretty easy to find as it turned out - the air filter was blocked with dust and a few squelchy locusts but the spreadsheet showed the effect almost immediately.
To be honest most of those conversions are there purely because it is something the spreadsheet is good at and took little trouble to add, not because I take much notice of the numbers. From memory the template dates back to 1990 and hasn’t been altered since.
When you first set it up for a new/particular vehicle it guides you through the process …
…and after that has been done it has a nice form to enter the data too.
Doubtless you can tell that I live very exciting life.
