I don't think you'd get the protection from lateral forces on the straight sections. Just a little bit of curve transfers the cross force down the whole curve.

I don't think you'd get the protection from lateral forces on the straight sections. Just a little bit of curve transfers the cross force down the whole curve. The gist is, if i push on a brick in the middle of a flat part, the force has to be resisted by the width of the single brick. but if i push on any part of the curve, that's got to lift the adjacent next level up bricks as well, which in turn have to lift the next level, and on and on. It's been a long, long time since i studied static forces though.