US is very much behind with it. You barely can see road signs with km/h, and temperatures in Celsius. I'd also prefer time to be in HH:MM:SS instead of AM/PM.
Metrification is fine for engineers, but what problem does it solve for people driving cars? Miles are miles everywhere in the United States, and it causes noone confusion. Again, what problem would switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius solve for most people? Rough estimates of outside temperature ranges would have a lower resolution? 100 degrees would be the boiling point of water instead of roughly the temperature of the human body? It would be easier to record measurements when dividing things by 10, but more difficult when dividing by 4 or 8, when in day-to-day life people more commonly divide things into 4 or 8?
Imperial units have the advantage of being human-scale, and consequently they are very useful for when humans want to estimate a quantity. And this is something people want to do all the time.
Europe had the problem of a thousand-plus years of poorly-defined standards that varied from country to country and even within countries. Metrification solved a real commercial problem, and there were so many competing standards that another one didn't really create a problem. This is not a problem the United States has, and metrification proponents always seem to imagine that metrification would be costless.
When do you see people dividing things by 8? 10's a lot more useful.
Can you be specific about what you mean by human scale?
Both temperature systems are in the same range. A yard and a meter are almost the same. A mile and a kilometer are in the same range. A pound and a kilogram are in the same range. Cup and liter are both about a factor of two away from a typical glass size. 5mL is about as easy as 'teaspoon' while being clearer and easier to divide into typical minimum recipe amounts.
It is a problem in US. Simply too much inertia and lack of political will to move this forward. Uniformity with other countries helps too. Why do you think military gets it better than others?
0-100 for freezing and boiling points is way simpler to use, especially when 0 is a border for significant change in environmental conditions when temperature goes in either direction from it. Most common temperatures will be two digits.
Metrification certainly solves a problem for the military, that involves NATO collaboration and international operations. The military already spends a lot of energy training soldiers, so the costs of metrification are lessened. This is not true of most Americans in their day-to-day life.
The thing is, these benefits are very small to most Americans while the costs of metrification are pretty large. Most Americans need to drive to an airport and spent half a day or more flying in order to get to a region where metrification is standard. Imperial is used for thousands of miles in every direction, except for specialized use cases.
In most day-to-day life, people are talking about temperature in terms of weather, not freezing and boiling. Weather in Fahrenheit ranges from about 0 to 120 most places in the US most of the time, making it easy to talk about temperature ranges in decades, whereas Celsius ranges from -10 to 45. There is an advantage here either way?
For me it's pretty intuitive, that -1°C and +1°C mean pretty different conditions outside. Anything with - is "cold"/"freezing", anything with + is "warm"/"hot". On the other hand +31°F and +33°F aren't as expressive for the same idea.
Boiling is also a pretty important point (for cooking). So having it at 100 is handy. Water is common in everyday life. Brine? No idea why anyone would use that for common measurements.
Plus, using two digits in the majority of cases is simpler. The bottom line, systems like Fahrenheit end up being used when scientists don't think much about practicality in everyday life. It's good no one is using Kelvin for that purpose.
But how are those problems to drivers today? The vast majority of drivers don't drive between multiple systems very often, so within their experience it is uniform. And what is simpler about km vs miles, given that everyone already knows miles?
I'm not sure why you single out drivers. It's a global change. I just brought examples above where there is an apparent lack of progress in metrification effort. Road signs aren't the only such example.
Just providing that as an example. The same points hold true for temperature. Why is it more simple and more uniform from the perspective of a society that is mostly non metric? What problems would switching solve that people actually deal with on a semi-regular basis? I ask this because unless there are such problems what is the motivation to switch? Why should we?
Those questions should be answered as a whole. And metric systems is simpler overall - there is no debate about it. I don't think it makes any sense to switch to it only partially. The only reason US doesn't switch is inertia (i.e. habit), and not concerns like "how it can improve things".
>The only reason US doesn't switch is inertia (i.e. habit), and not concerns like "how it can improve things"
You say that like they're two different things. No one does anything just because. The benefits of switching have to outweigh the benefits of staying the same, one of which is always going to be "it's already done". Why bother reversing inertia and switching unless it improves things? You aren't articulating why the change should be made, you're just asserting that it should.
And just saying "It's simpler" means nothing, because being simple isn't a benefit all on it's own. Does it being simpler mean X number of increased work hours because we aren't wasting time converting? Does it being simpler mean Y fewer accidents on the road or in the workplace? These are reasons, not just "it's simpler".
US was pushing the effort in the past, with government obviously convinced that benefits are worth it. But inertia was too much, and they ditched active pushing in order not to risk their public image. Since then it's kind of formally "on the plate", but in practice it's barely moving anywhere.
Yes, I understand all that, but it's still not an answer to the question of what, given the facts as they are, the benefits are that make it worth going against that inertia.
(Also: The only discussion on potential benefits in your link is sourced by a dead link)
>And just saying "It's simpler" means nothing, because being simple isn't a benefit all on it's own. Does it being simpler mean X number of increased work hours because we aren't wasting time converting? Does it being simpler mean Y fewer accidents on the road or in the workplace? These are reasons, not just "it's simpler".
What are the tangible benefits to people's lives that "uniformity" would bring? And do you think they outweigh the benefits of continuing to use our existing system? Why or why not?
The whole "[SI] just makes more sense" argument just falls apart when you realize that hundreds of millions of people do just fine with the imperial system. ;)
Not if you have a technical job imperial is much harder that SI units and remember there is more than one imperial standard eg a Pint in the USA is not a the same as a Pint in the UK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
With this rate it will take forever. There isn't enough political will do finish the job.