> to go fully metric would take a genereration

Longer than that, I'd say. I remember watching videos about the metric system when I was in grade school back in the 70's. ("You can measure how far from your car to a star -- with the metric system!")

I mean, not if there was an actual metrication effort. There isn’t. Nobody’s putting up any speed limit signs in kilometres per hour or using celsius for the weather forecast.

not just speed limit signs. Mile markers, exit numbers, distance signs. There's millions of them all over the US. It would cost unfathomably (lol) large amounts of money to do that, and for arbitrary reasons.

You saw it in the 70s because that's when there was an effort (later abandoned) to convert the US to metric.

I'll believe the US is using metric when you can buy rice by the kilo, gas by the liter, paper in ISO sizes, and construction sheet goods in increments other than 8x4 feet.

Non-metric preferred sizes are embedded everywhere.

The Carter administration attempted to start a full transition to metric in the late 1970s. When Reagan took power this was killed and no one attempted to revive it, because it was turned into a nationalist thing, one of those things Republicans reflexively oppose.

> But to force the people to go fully metric would take a genereration.

It's already taken more.