Comment by Normille | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Normille | Hacker News Reader

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  >I've been to-and-fro across much of North America for much of my life. I have never encountered a situation where it was especially challenging to orient to the cardinal directions...

This is one thing I always find quite odd on American TV / Films.

People [eg. police pursuing someone] will inevtiably say something like "He's turned north onto 21st St." or "He's heading east on 12th street". I always wonder how they know the compass direction. I don't think many people in Britain would express directions like this, using compass points, or even know which direction was which.

Do US streets have the cardinal directions on the roadsigns, or are you all issued with built-in compasses at birth?

> Do US streets have the cardinal directions on the roadsigns, or are you all issued with built-in compasses at birth?

A lot of cities have somewhat gridlike street patterns, and those are often roughly oriented to the cardinal directions, so in those places, people will use them that way. (This is especially true in cities that are relatively flat and were mostly settled by colonists after the mid-19th century. Look at a map of Pierre, SD, Denver, CO, or Wichita, KS.)

Even when it's not north-south, people will still do this. In Manhattan, for example, the streets are actually offset by 29°, but people will still say "east" or "west" to mean "towards the Hudson/East River", respectively.

But also, the dialogue in cop dramas is always going to be forced and artificial, so I wouldn't read too much into that anyway.

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