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Comment by xboxnolifes | Hacker News Reader

Do you need a road if you went out with 10 friends off-roading together and camped out over night? What about if you went with 3 other groups?

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Yes, you need it and you build it, even if it's unconsciously and informally, by not driving cars in the middle of the tents

Burning Man was 10 or 30 people when someone ran over someone else sleeping?

Offroading, unless it's on sand dunes, generally has paths (i.e., roads), either official or well-trodden ones, that people drive on. Are people sleeping on these paths or in the middle of the sand dunes?

I thought Burning Man was full of "smart" people?

In the early days, people showed up and just camped wherever. Also, people just drove whenever. For the most part, it worked, until it didn't. When things are unsafe, people are more careful. Norway and Sweden deliberately made their roads less safe to take advantage of this.

There are no stop signs at intersections at Burning Man and thousands of cyclists and yet there are very few collisions. Why? Everyone has to pay attention.

Eventually though, drugs, drinking, driving and tents randomly placed around the open lake bed lead to disaster and they had to add roads. This helped in other ways too. It meant that emergency services could find people who needed help. I also meant that it was easier to describe where your tent was to your friends, or find your way back to camp.

> Norway and Sweden deliberately made their roads less safe to take advantage of this.

All over Europe you see "horizontal speed bumps": deliberate road constrictions that funnel you into oncoming traffic. To an American it looks crazy but it works.

Regular speed bumps won't funnel you into oncoming traffic, are you talking about something different? Searching for "horizontal" specifically didn't yield anything distinct.

I think they’re referring to a curb extension or “neckdown.” It takes a street with 2-way traffic and adds a mid-block choke point so only one car can go through at a time.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_extension

Sorry for the lazy terminology, I actually meant chicanes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicane

The U.S. definitely has those in cities that demand them.

> I thought Burning Man was full of "smart" people?

You'd be surprised how *really* *fucking* *stupid* "smart people" are.

Even you. Even me.

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