4 ms·

Just spent 3 months traveling across the United States and then 3 months traveling across Europe and now I’m super curious what part of Europe you visited and w

Just spent 3 months traveling across the United States and then 3 months traveling across Europe and now I’m super curious what part of Europe you visited and what part of the US you are from?

theptip 4y ago
Some extremely old towns or cities might meet this description (and EU has plenty of those). Central Naples for example would probably be navigable on a 200-year old map. Modern metro areas or developed suburbs not so much.
- usrusr 4y ago
  Not just that, it's also expectations. Traffic runs on a stack not only of rules, but also of cultural conventions. And both rules and conventions exist not only defining the dos and don'ts for drivers but also defining those of traffic engineers. When we drive in a different country we know that the driving rules are slightly different. We suspect that the conventions for driving are not quite the same. But the differences in rules and conventions of road design are mostly invisible. We may notice the most glaring differences like preferring roundabouts vs preferring crossings, but the large majority of those design principle differences, they are so close to invisible that we expect our expectations to still work. But they don't. Everything just feels subtly off, and sometimes there's a large difference standing out and we just declare that badly planned. Even when it's in fact perfectly in line with local expectationsand usage patterns, and works just fine (except for the confused foreigner). We notice a few standout differences and then blame every bit of traffic badness we encounter nonetheless on the few differences we consciously notice. The parts that work well are usually completely invisible, because traffic, in our perception, only exists when it's bad. Rules/conventions on the design side exist for and can differ in just about every aspect, down to draining angle of road surface (do you drain symmetrically or to one side? Do you switch to draining to the inside in a curve? What about softer curves, sharper curves? A consistent threshold is very valuable, but if one country has a different consistent threshold than the other it feels "wrong" to everybody cross-driving even if no side is objectively better). Or the general shape of curves, some places have strict rules for keeping the second derivative of direction as flat as possible, with few, definitive jumps, others prefer a gentleness above all approach.
bergenty 4y ago
I was in Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and then Italy. I think Denmark and Sweden had the best roads. German autobahns we’re great but getting close to any population center meant I’ll planned junctions showed up again. Not to mention there is no parking anywhere, a real nightmare on a road trip.
- kamranjon 4y ago
  My biggest takeaway from Europe was how incredibly well cities were planned for pedestrians vs cars. Obviously these cities were often developed much earlier than US cities and this makes perfect sense. We got all around Europe (Slovakia to Switzerland to Italy to Austria and back) all without a car. As a US citizen this priority can be frustrating at times because some cities even have no admittance for non-local cars, so you gotta park out of the city and transit in if you don’t have a local plate. But as a US citizen I am incredibly envious of the rail network and the downtown areas which are pedestrian only and entirely devoid of cars. But also fundamentally we found that just as in states within the US, country to country things were vastly different with road quality. Many Eastern European countries are still weeding out corruption in their political systems and funds allocated for infrastructure are finally making it into public projects, so they often had worse roads and rail systems.

Just spent 3 months traveling across the United States and then 3 months traveling across Europe and now I’m super curious what part of Europe you visited and what part of the US you are from?

theptip 4y ago

Some extremely old towns or cities might meet this description (and EU has plenty of those). Central Naples for example would probably be navigable on a 200-year old map. Modern metro areas or developed suburbs not so much.

usrusr 4y ago
Not just that, it's also expectations. Traffic runs on a stack not only of rules, but also of cultural conventions. And both rules and conventions exist not only defining the dos and don'ts for drivers but also defining those of traffic engineers. When we drive in a different country we know that the driving rules are slightly different. We suspect that the conventions for driving are not quite the same. But the differences in rules and conventions of road design are mostly invisible. We may notice the most glaring differences like preferring roundabouts vs preferring crossings, but the large majority of those design principle differences, they are so close to invisible that we expect our expectations to still work. But they don't. Everything just feels subtly off, and sometimes there's a large difference standing out and we just declare that badly planned. Even when it's in fact perfectly in line with local expectationsand usage patterns, and works just fine (except for the confused foreigner). We notice a few standout differences and then blame every bit of traffic badness we encounter nonetheless on the few differences we consciously notice. The parts that work well are usually completely invisible, because traffic, in our perception, only exists when it's bad. Rules/conventions on the design side exist for and can differ in just about every aspect, down to draining angle of road surface (do you drain symmetrically or to one side? Do you switch to draining to the inside in a curve? What about softer curves, sharper curves? A consistent threshold is very valuable, but if one country has a different consistent threshold than the other it feels "wrong" to everybody cross-driving even if no side is objectively better). Or the general shape of curves, some places have strict rules for keeping the second derivative of direction as flat as possible, with few, definitive jumps, others prefer a gentleness above all approach.

bergenty 4y ago

I was in Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and then Italy. I think Denmark and Sweden had the best roads. German autobahns we’re great but getting close to any population center meant I’ll planned junctions showed up again. Not to mention there is no parking anywhere, a real nightmare on a road trip.

kamranjon 4y ago
My biggest takeaway from Europe was how incredibly well cities were planned for pedestrians vs cars. Obviously these cities were often developed much earlier than US cities and this makes perfect sense. We got all around Europe (Slovakia to Switzerland to Italy to Austria and back) all without a car. As a US citizen this priority can be frustrating at times because some cities even have no admittance for non-local cars, so you gotta park out of the city and transit in if you don’t have a local plate. But as a US citizen I am incredibly envious of the rail network and the downtown areas which are pedestrian only and entirely devoid of cars. But also fundamentally we found that just as in states within the US, country to country things were vastly different with road quality. Many Eastern European countries are still weeding out corruption in their political systems and funds allocated for infrastructure are finally making it into public projects, so they often had worse roads and rail systems.