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Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

There's this place in Atlanta where one makes a 180 turn from one interstate to another. They added flashing lights, paint all over the place, signs. Still, there are so many vehicles going off the road that no grass ever grows there. Here's the Google Street view of the dirt patch, complete with vehicle debris which accumulates almost every day.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7939354,-84.3917037,3a,75y,1...

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From street view that doesn't seem that difficult to negotiate - is it just distracted/low skill drivers? Speeds too high?

On a side note - zooming out from that, the sprawl of Atlanta looks unlivable. On several nearby highways I counted 18+ lanes!

Having negotiated this particular turn many times, I'd guess it's a combination of factors. Atlanta is spread out so the highways are typically long and straight, so apart from rush hour the fast lane typically goes 70-80 mph comfortably. Even on highways, you're usually ok to reduce speed to 60 mph to make interstate turns, e.g. spaghetti junction (85/285). Interstate turns this sharp are very rare so even natives need to be alert. I-75 is a long multi-state road so many out-of-towners may not be expecting the sharpness of this turn. Not sure if this plays into it, but it does also exit from the fast lane.

There's a "Right Lane Ends" sign right there, and I'd imagine people unfamiliar with the turn see that sign and their brain just can't catch up with trying to process both slowing down for the 25mph turn and a left merge.

Might be better to have the left merge occur before the turn, then do the turn. Otherwise you're doing several things at once: Merging, slowing down, and maintaining direction around a turn with a changing radius. Two of those would probably be challenging at once.

Ha, I grew up in Atlanta but left 12 years ago and haven't been back. I immediately knew exactly the spot you were talking about.

At what point do you change the turn? Signs and paint is great, but maybe the fundamentals are just bad.

That road is knackered too - is that a commmon state for roads around there?

The roads in the US are in general horribly maintained. I've driven across it north/south 8-10 times and east/west 4 times along different routes/not just freeways and it's rare to find great roads. Michigan was the worst but luckily starting/ending in Ontario we weren't often on their roads for long.

Sorta depends where you're at. In cities that have hot summers and cold winters (Spokane, etc.) you get terrible roads. Poorer parts of cities have worse roads than richer parts (compare north Tacoma to basically the rest of Tacoma).

In suburban, high-traffic†, low-traffic†, or moderate climate areas the roads are fine. In fact some of the freeways around where I live have been putting in the "quiet asphalt" stuff— driving is quiet, even in my 2000 Corolla!

† High traffic areas get attention because they get beat up easily. Low traffic highways do not get as beat up. This still kinda depends on who maintains the road, how rich the surrounding area is, climate, etc.

Weather is really important. For all the traffic it has, the freeways in LA are generally not that bad. 300 days of sunshine and no freezing temps helps a lot.

That's why I specified how widely travelled I was. I definitely understand weather related issues having grown up in Ontario with a 50-60c swing in temps over the course of a year + salt. But I saw lots of awful roads in the north east, the south, midwest, south west, west, and north west.

It's pretty safe to say that in general US roads are poorly maintained. Like saying in general UK rail is poorly maintained.

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