The new metric system: I’m following the car in front at the correct distance. Cf. the drivers in the other lanes.
Now that I live in the northern suburbs, I have to go on the motorway far more frequently. It’s become apparent that New Zealand has had a complete change of measurement system and I was unaware of it.
I thought we were on the metric system but apparently, there is a new metric system at play these days.
When the “smart” motorway speed limit signs display 60 km/h, a handful of drivers, like me, go at the old 60 km/h. But there is evidently a new 60 km/h, which we oldies called ‘80 km/h’. If the other drivers are not breaking the law, the majority of cars in this country appear to have had speedometers newly calibrated to the new metric system. When the sign says 80 km/h, they will travel at between 90 and 100 km/h. It doesn’t quite explain why, when the sign says 100 km/h, so many drive at 90 km/h, but that’s the incredible nature of the new metric system: unlike the old, it’s not proportional.
I’m not entirely sure how the system converts metres or seconds, as I seem to do double the following distance of the majority of drivers. From memory, it’s 40 m at 100 km/h, or, if you want to adopt the 1970s slogan from the UK, or the one uttered by the late Peter Brock, ‘Only a fool breaks the two-second rule.’ The new metric system at play in New Zealand means that the new 40 m is the same as what we old-timers called 20 m. Or, if they’re going by the clock, two seconds is what we used to call one second. I assume this new metric system also applies to penis length for men, so they aren’t too disappointed when their 7½ cm is now called 15 cm. Sounds so much bigger, doesn’t it, lads?
Now, I could be wrong about there being a new metric system in this country. It’s simply that many people don’t understand speed and distance, or how road signs work. If you are male and think that 20 m really is 40 m, then maybe you have a small dick and have been convincing yourself otherwise, and the problem is multiplied on the roads. Sadly, however, this lack of awareness of time and distance isn’t exclusively a male thing.
As a nation, we’ve been so busy for such a long time blaming “Asian drivers” that our standards have dropped like stones. It wasn’t that long ago when we Wellingtonians mocked Aucklanders for their ‘Merge like a zip’ signs in the mid-2000s—yet it seems an increasing number of us in the capital are now just as clueless on how traffic merges into a single lane.
All this makes you wonder if Greg Murphy was right when he suggested we should re-sit our driving test every 10 years.
You may also like
