The Department of Transport has admitted that it cannot meet its October 1st deadline for changing from miles-per-hour to kilometres-per-hour.
It was expected that Ireland's speed limit signs would change from mph to kph at the end of September. At the same time some speed limits, such as around schools, on non-national routes and on motorways, would also be changed.
However, the Department of Transport has admitted that this deadline is unrealistic. "The changeover will occur before the end of the year," confirmed a spokesman for the Minister. "But it will not happen on October 1st as planned." The delay has been put down to problems getting the 50,000 new speed limit signs manufactured in time.
While the changeover continues to be delayed, the motor industry continues to work towards a January 1st, 2005, deadline, after which all new cars must have kph as the dominant or only reading on their speedometers. This date coincides with the peak car sales period and many dealers and importers are becoming extremely anxious that this deadline may also change leaving them with thousands of new cars that have the wrong speedo readings. Most of the country's importers are already ordering their stocks to meet the traditional January buying boom.
"Failure by government to adhere to this timeframe would in theory leave distributors in January with tens of thousands of un-sellable cars," warned Ford.
As the deadline approaches, some motorists are starting to look for ways to convert their cars' speedometers to kph.
But technicians have warned against using stickers or clip-on conversions that superimpose a kph reading over the mph readout as they could give widely inaccurate readings and lead to unintentional speed limit infringements.
Experts say that placing a sticker over the speedometer's cover would cause parallax errors depending on the angle of the cover, its distance from the actual display and the angle of the driver's vision. "We do not favour this stop-gap and inaccurate solution," said Ford. "A speedometer by its nature is a precise instrument, and there would need to be factory-like quality safeguards that the sticker is applied accurately."
It has also been suggested that the sticker should be placed directly over the existing readout. However, most dash clusters are integrated units and cannot be dissembled. As a result, car importers say they will not be offering or recommending such conversions.
Indeed, most importers say that motorists do not need to take any action as their cars' speedos are already dual calibrated with kph as well mph displayed. Those who do want a dominant kph speedo are being advised to opt for a new dash cluster. But with such clusters costing upwards of €700, it is expected that take up will be minimal.