Honestly, this is a unit that one could easily use and be somewhat correct. I often think about the gains or losses based on actual travel speed vs speed limit. If you end up taking an extra 6 minutes during a drive that would normally take 1 hour,, you could actually state you're travelling 0.9 hours per hour. I like it.
You know, I had 1.1 and then decided to change it. I’m thinking you can travel as far at this new speed as you could in 0.9 hours at normal speed. But both ways could make sense. (In practice, this is a great argument for why these units don’t actually work.)
Of course, because h/h is unitless, so inverting it just becomes a convoluted way of saying "I was 10% slower than normal" versus "normally I'm 10% faster than today".
Measuring distance in "hours of drive" is like measuring distance by number of sneezes, just because of how hugely this standard will vary around the world. A 20-hour drive in North America is a totally different distance than a 20-hour drive in Europe, which is again a totally different distance than a 20-hour drive in Africa or Siberia.
M o t o r c y c l e?
What about the road and time of driving? Do you take the rush hour time or night time?
Do you measure it with 250km/h on German Autobahn, or a mountain road in Norway?
Measuring distance with driving time makes as much sense as measuring amount of diesel with cups.
Well, the general assumption is "this is how long it would take me to get there given current expected road conditions" so saying "I'm about two hours out of the city" is a distance approximation left to reasonable assumptions. Certainly not an accurate distance measurement, but it gives a general idea.
Besides, the alternative is using the distance in length, which could be the road length or as the crow flies, which is more accurate, but isn't super easy to imagine. Bigger numbers tend to be harder to quantify mentally.
Do you tell the friend you're visiting you're 100km away or an hour? Which do you think they'll more easily understand?
Obviously. I'm just saying that for distance being told, not shown, the time it'd take to get there is easier to tell than distance, unless you have a point of reference from both sides. IE: "From your house, I'm about 100km out, near the Mall" this helps quantify it to those familiar with the area.
And yeah, obviously we don't know what the area is like unless we live there and can see the state of the roadways. That's a given, isn't it?
Also assuming a lack of education is wild, I never assumed you weren't educated.
Also want to add that anyone with a decent education could probably guess how far someone is with a distance, it's just harder to visualize than a time, which people see more prominently when using map apps. "I'm 50 minutes away from the destination" is pretty concrete to imagine quickly. Being 25 miles away is easy enough, too, but takes a bit more thought. Both are valid forms of distance measurement in their appropriate contexts.
but where? A 20-hour drive in Canada or Australia or a 20-hour drive in Europe or Asia? Or a 20-hour drive in Africa? The distance that a 20-hour drive will cover in each of those places can vary by orders of magnitude. You might as well measure the distance in number of farts you made while driving. It would be just as accurate.
And then there's the issue of people using "driving time" to measure distance in cities, where people could just as likely be biking or walking or taking transit. A 2-hour drive can be 5-times faster than a bike in a rural area, but a bike would go 2 or 3 times faster than a car in a big city. And still some people will measure travel distance by time without specifying what mode of travel their measurement is based on, or knowing what mode of travel you are using when they made their estimate.
A 20-hour drive in Canada or Australia or a 20-hour drive in Europe or Asia? Or a 20-hour drive in Africa?
That's the point. It's 20 hours in all of them. If I tell you it's 2000km away do you know how many times you will need to stop? No, it depends on the road. If I tell you it's 20 hours you know if you are comfortable with driving 10 hours in a row. Is it 2000km away in a straight line, or do you mean driving distance?
Not really. I've driven for 6 hours before. If it takes you 6 hours to drive from Bangkok to the epicentre of the earthquake I have a good idea of how far that is. It's bad if you're trying to take scientific measurements, which nobody in this thread is doing.
In my mind 20 hours from Bangkok could be the equivalent of driving across my state, or driving halfway across the US. I don’t know the rate of travel in Myanmar
Interesting. I'm from Nova Scotia - I did an 8 month work term in Regina and got made fun of (jokingly) for referring to distance by how long it takes to drive there.
Not sure what's "funny" about. But if you're alluding that the building broke down, because it was built by a Chinese company, then I dunno ... I'm not really sure how "earthquake proof" buildings/skyscrapers are when they're still under construction.
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u/alexiao 8d ago
This was supposed to be in Bangkok