Why do Europeans hate time as a unit of distance?
- Thread starter Zontar
- Start date
Never heard this as such, but I do find giving a time is a little misleading, since there are often many ways to get somewhere, which take different amounts of time.
Though it reminds me that as a pilot, in practice we typically measure our fuel reserves in terms of hours of flight time.
I guess that's actually because navigation errors, diversions, wind conditions and the like make the actual distance and speed we travel at kinda unpredictable, so it's very hard to say how far exactly you can fly on a full tank of fuel, while you mostly know exactly how long you can stay in the air before you're running on fumes...
Though it reminds me that as a pilot, in practice we typically measure our fuel reserves in terms of hours of flight time.
I guess that's actually because navigation errors, diversions, wind conditions and the like make the actual distance and speed we travel at kinda unpredictable, so it's very hard to say how far exactly you can fly on a full tank of fuel, while you mostly know exactly how long you can stay in the air before you're running on fumes...
I thought this was going to be a thread about general relativity or something. I'm a little bit disappointed.
It does seem more helpful to give an estimated travel time, but I guess it's just one of those weird cultural differences Euros are not used to?
What bothers me is people who ask how many blocks away something is, because streets aren't always in a grid formation. (I guess it works in cities like New York though?)
I worked at a call center for Onstar recently (TERRIBLE JOB, every other caller was road raging) and it would throw me off with Americans asking how many blocks away something was after I'd give them the estimated travel time, that just isn't as much of a thing in Canada in my experience.
(btw the worst callers came from either Chicago or anywhere in Arkansas)
It does seem more helpful to give an estimated travel time, but I guess it's just one of those weird cultural differences Euros are not used to?
What bothers me is people who ask how many blocks away something is, because streets aren't always in a grid formation. (I guess it works in cities like New York though?)
I worked at a call center for Onstar recently (TERRIBLE JOB, every other caller was road raging) and it would throw me off with Americans asking how many blocks away something was after I'd give them the estimated travel time, that just isn't as much of a thing in Canada in my experience.
(btw the worst callers came from either Chicago or anywhere in Arkansas)
I guess it's a question of "questioning convention".
Those Europeans asked for the distance, not the travel-time. If they wanted the travel-time they'd ask you for that.
Those Europeans asked for the distance, not the travel-time. If they wanted the travel-time they'd ask you for that.
We (or at least I) hate the use of time as a measure of distance because time is (surprise, surprise) a measure of TIME and not distance.
The only way time can be used as a measure of distance is if you also gives the (constant) speed you are travelling with. Any changes in speed and you have to do even more calculations.
Distance is always measures in meters or km (or miles if you are from one of the few countries not using SI-units).
The only way time can be used as a measure of distance is if you also gives the (constant) speed you are travelling with. Any changes in speed and you have to do even more calculations.
Distance is always measures in meters or km (or miles if you are from one of the few countries not using SI-units).
hm...
I never noticed that. In fact I can think of cases where I did use time, combined with the mode of transportation. But that is usually when I use public transport. That is because a bus, tram or trains won't might not take the direct route, but they will usually take the same route every time with a similar speed.
If I'm on foot I can estimate the distance better. The same is with a car. It also helps that there are many signs that indicate the distance between towns.
Longer distances by car in particular would be confusing. Traffic, different taste in which kind of road to use (highway, ordinary roads) and obviously different speed between drivers makes the usage of time very useless.
I never noticed that. In fact I can think of cases where I did use time, combined with the mode of transportation. But that is usually when I use public transport. That is because a bus, tram or trains won't might not take the direct route, but they will usually take the same route every time with a similar speed.
If I'm on foot I can estimate the distance better. The same is with a car. It also helps that there are many signs that indicate the distance between towns.
Longer distances by car in particular would be confusing. Traffic, different taste in which kind of road to use (highway, ordinary roads) and obviously different speed between drivers makes the usage of time very useless.
We do that in Sweden, actually. Funnt thing is, the opposite never happens. Nobody says "We'll have to wait for about three kilometers before the movie starts."
It is my understanding that in the US we drive greater distances, in Europe most drivers use cars for short trips and public transportation for longer ones. So for practical purposes, the time it can get take to get somewhere is more important when understanding the trip than the distance.
So if someone asks me "How far away is Peoria from Chicago?" then my assumption will usually be that that person is planning to drive there and wants to know when they should leave. The route itself is not anything like a straight line, so giving the linear distance seems kind of pointless.
I think there's also a cultural effect at play. Americans, at least based on my experiences travelling in other countries, are much more insistent than Europeans that things be on time and much more concerned with how long things will take. Go to an American city, and almost everyone is wearing a watch, on the other hand when I was in Europe watches were not nearly as common. Ask an American what time it is, and they'll be able to answer to a precision of at least a quarter of an hour without even looking at the time and if they do then they will tell you exactly, rounded to the nearest 5 minutes, they are constantly aware of what time it is. When I was in Europe and I asked for the time most people would just give the hour, like if it was 4:37 then they would say "4"; an American would be more likely to say "4:30" or "4:35". Just my experience.
So if someone asks me "How far away is Peoria from Chicago?" then my assumption will usually be that that person is planning to drive there and wants to know when they should leave. The route itself is not anything like a straight line, so giving the linear distance seems kind of pointless.
I think there's also a cultural effect at play. Americans, at least based on my experiences travelling in other countries, are much more insistent than Europeans that things be on time and much more concerned with how long things will take. Go to an American city, and almost everyone is wearing a watch, on the other hand when I was in Europe watches were not nearly as common. Ask an American what time it is, and they'll be able to answer to a precision of at least a quarter of an hour without even looking at the time and if they do then they will tell you exactly, rounded to the nearest 5 minutes, they are constantly aware of what time it is. When I was in Europe and I asked for the time most people would just give the hour, like if it was 4:37 then they would say "4"; an American would be more likely to say "4:30" or "4:35". Just my experience.
I don't hate it, however I find it somewhat inaccurate despite the fact that I actually do use it myself.
We don't, or at least in the UK we don't...we are rarely concerned with distance but time it takes to get there
Time as a unit of distance is much more useful than the actual distance itself, due to road speed limits...
100 miles on a motorway might only take 85-90 minutes to travel but you do 100 miles and never once go on a dual carriageway or motorway and you're looking at 2-2.5 hours minimum.
It's more useful as it takes into account distance and road types and so on.
What use is knowing something is 30 miles away and thinking that's manageable and only later finding out it's a 30mph limit the whole way and it takes you an hour or having known it was an hour away to begin with...
When planning a journey or deciding to make one at all, the travel time is usually the most important factor...
Time as a unit of distance is much more useful than the actual distance itself, due to road speed limits...
100 miles on a motorway might only take 85-90 minutes to travel but you do 100 miles and never once go on a dual carriageway or motorway and you're looking at 2-2.5 hours minimum.
It's more useful as it takes into account distance and road types and so on.
What use is knowing something is 30 miles away and thinking that's manageable and only later finding out it's a 30mph limit the whole way and it takes you an hour or having known it was an hour away to begin with...
When planning a journey or deciding to make one at all, the travel time is usually the most important factor...
It is when distance is only a means to the root of the question. That question (questions) being "Around what time will you arrive? How long does it take you to get from point a to point b? How should I plan my schedule around how long it takes you?"Smooth Operator said:
Straight up distance isn't really all that meaningful for that kind of question even though distance is generally what determines the answer given society's common means of transport being car, train, bus, or on foot. To say it's illogical is to ignore contextual information and demand everything be almost autistically literal.
To say I'm 40 minutes away gives you a certain bit of meaningful data that saying I'm 40 Km away doesn't, so... Go Canada.
OT: I'm almost convinced now that if Canada or the US does it, Europe hates it by default. *shrugs*
What can you do?
Ehh... That's an incredibly, seriously broad over-generalisation.renegade7 said:
Ask an English person the time they'll likely give it to you to the nearest 15 minutes. Same with a dutch person.
Ask a German, they'll probably do a little better. Might even give you the exact minute.
(Then again, Germans are considered to be rather obsessed with precision and punctuality. Train conductors apparently hand out notes to passengers if the train is late, so that people can show their boss)
Ask someone in Spain, Italy or Portugal though, and you'll probably get some rather vague answer that's only very approximately correct.
Talking about 'Europe' like it's one consistent, homogenous mass belies the fact that there's so many different countries, with so many different cultures and ways of life, that doing so actually makes very little sense.
The french aren't the Germans, who aren't Dutch, Who aren't English, who aren't Italian, who aren't Swedish, and so on and so forth.
This is as evident in time-keeping as it is in other areas of these cultures.
It's normal in England to use time as a unit of distance. Though as Bill Bryson notes, having to travel for anywhere more than an hour away will cause an English person to wince like it is the worst thing in the world (he was comparing them to Americans, who will happily travel two hours just to get a to particular restuarant they like). In a country as comparatively small as the UK, any distance seems comparatively larger.
Firstly, Europe isn't just one place, it is a combination of various nations and cultures so different that it makes generalising all but impossible.Zontar said:
Secondly, I have never heard of this dislike. Ever. I think it's just you, well, either that or just people from the Americas.
Thirdly, whilst I've never heard of this dislike, measuring time by distance is objectively fucking stupid. To convert time to distance you need at least an estimate of speed.
Maybe it's because time is as a unit of distance is useless to someone who isn't familiar with the route/area and who may not have access to a reliable form of transport or have immediate access to a method of getting there at a constant speed.
Saying a place is "1 hour away" may be all very well and good for you who knows the area and has access to personal vehicle, or is familiar with the local transport infrastructure, but when a tourist or businessman asks you how far away something is, they're probably expecting an answer in a universal unit of distance that would be equally applicable to them and help them get an idea of the journey and the distance, not a vague answer that is an opinion about how long it takes you to travel there... a subjective answer that may not be true for the person who would have to first find their way to a method of travel to get to that place, and if they are in control of their chosen method of transport, actually navigate their way there for the first time, which is something that may take them longer than the stated unit of time that it would for a local making the same journey.
I experienced similar frustration when I went to visit my brother in a town that I've never visited before, but he'd been living in for 5+ years. He was very blasé about how it was impossible to get lost and how the place I was staying in was only 15 minutes away from his house and only 20 minutes away from the centre of town... but when I was left to my own devices after the pub and had to walk back on my own from his house in the dark, did it only take me 15 minutes to get there? Did if fuck. The vague directions he gave me and short-cuts he showed me were useless to someone who wasn't intimately familiar with the area.
Maybe next time someone asks you how far away somewhere is, you should give an answer in a unit of distance rather than give an opinion about how long it would take you to make the journey.
Could you imagine how frustrating it would be if people did this with units of currency and when you asked someone how much something cost, they gave you the answer in how many hours work it would take them to earn the money to buy it?
Saying a place is "1 hour away" may be all very well and good for you who knows the area and has access to personal vehicle, or is familiar with the local transport infrastructure, but when a tourist or businessman asks you how far away something is, they're probably expecting an answer in a universal unit of distance that would be equally applicable to them and help them get an idea of the journey and the distance, not a vague answer that is an opinion about how long it takes you to travel there... a subjective answer that may not be true for the person who would have to first find their way to a method of travel to get to that place, and if they are in control of their chosen method of transport, actually navigate their way there for the first time, which is something that may take them longer than the stated unit of time that it would for a local making the same journey.
I experienced similar frustration when I went to visit my brother in a town that I've never visited before, but he'd been living in for 5+ years. He was very blasé about how it was impossible to get lost and how the place I was staying in was only 15 minutes away from his house and only 20 minutes away from the centre of town... but when I was left to my own devices after the pub and had to walk back on my own from his house in the dark, did it only take me 15 minutes to get there? Did if fuck. The vague directions he gave me and short-cuts he showed me were useless to someone who wasn't intimately familiar with the area.
Maybe next time someone asks you how far away somewhere is, you should give an answer in a unit of distance rather than give an opinion about how long it would take you to make the journey.
Could you imagine how frustrating it would be if people did this with units of currency and when you asked someone how much something cost, they gave you the answer in how many hours work it would take them to earn the money to buy it?
As a brit, if you ask me how far away some thing or place is i will probably tell you how far away it is, as a distance since that is what you asked me. If you ask me how long it will take to get to some thing or place i will tell you roughly how long it might take. I might be inclined to give you both pieces of information, but i will answer the question that you asked. Since travel time depends on how fast you are actually going, which can change quite alot, it makes no sense to me to use time to measure distance.
Another factor could be the greater popularity of "alternative transport" in most European countries.
I for example use my bicycle to get around quite often, and I also walk to places. In those cases knowing how many kilometers I have to pedal/walk/run is a lot more useful than knowing roughly how long it takes to drive there in a car.
I for example use my bicycle to get around quite often, and I also walk to places. In those cases knowing how many kilometers I have to pedal/walk/run is a lot more useful than knowing roughly how long it takes to drive there in a car.