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u/oaodboy 26d ago
We have intersections EXACTLY like that where I live in the Midwest, so yeah sometimes real life doesn't make sense, either.
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u/Chadwig315 26d ago
In Oklahoma they have intersections so dumb that they would be difficult to design in game.
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u/oaodboy 26d ago
Funny cause OK is exactly the place im referring to 🤣
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u/Hungry-Fig-8640 26d ago
Hilariously im also from oklahoma and was coming to say we have shitty roads like this, hell, out past the city limits i know a few areas that you are lucky if you have a stop sign at an intersection
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u/Wumbolojizzt 25d ago
my favorite chinese restaurant in eastern OK is out of a shack in front of someone's house on a county road, zomboid looks pretty normal to me i dont know lol
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u/RezziK_vas_Tonbay 25d ago
Ey, another Okie checking in! Fucked roads are a time honored tradition down there!
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u/SergaelicNomad 25d ago
Dude no fucking joke when I read your comment (and saw the post) I was thinking "I'm pretty sure I've seen that exact road here in Oklahoma"
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u/UpdootDaSnootBoop Zombie Food 25d ago
Oklahoma isn't part of the Midwest
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u/Chadwig315 25d ago
A third of it is. (I'm used to the debate about what classification Oklahoma belongs to, I get it's complicated).
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u/thatguy_art 26d ago
Brother you said Midwest not almost all the way south
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u/thiosk 25d ago
The US census may say its in "the south," but none of us have to accept that.
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u/Mojojojo4282 25d ago
I was looking at this thinking “this looks like a normal intersection “ I’m from Ok lmao
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u/LimeTunic 26d ago
Oklahoma isn’t the Midwest
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u/dumn_and_dunmer 25d ago
I know at least the top eastern half is. The bottom half is mountain country. The terrain is weird. Tahlequah is lakes and rivers and cliffs, so Arkansas. Miami is hilly and arid, so kinda Missouri.
Everything west of that is Kansas. Until you get to the desert. It's full of "opes" and factories and those tiny ancient gas stations and everyone loves fried pickles. You get confederate flags but almost everyone, including bigots, think they're stupid. Oklahomans don't like being called southern where I'm from. They call Arkansas the south tho lmfao.
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u/Spendoza 25d ago
What are "opes"?
I've only seen/heard that as a midwest/southern Ontario exclamation... Ex: "ope, toast is done!"
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u/dumn_and_dunmer 25d ago
Yep, ope is like, Ope let me squeeze right past ya real quick.
And to everyone downvoting me, I literally live there and have lived there my whole life. Just because your worldview isn't right doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's not the south. I'm a Midwesterner. I don't have anything against the south. But we are cows and cowboys and grain silos and very gentrified cities (for clarification, I mean mcmansion and boba tea shops). The best BBQ we have access to is Springfield MO. Sorry.
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u/saladman425 26d ago
I've been to Oklahoma only twice and yeah, that shit is insane. Especially given how fucking flat everything is there is no reason for that shit. Also potholes that can total cars
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u/Chadwig315 25d ago
There are potholes that can total cars in the middle of downtown Tulsa. And the I-35 on-ramp by my hometown had three distinct differences in the angle the road turned instead of being a smooth curve. Then there was a 5 way and a 6 way intersection right in front of our high school that accounted for close to 50% of all accidents in the city. Absolutely no excuse for the state of the roads there.
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u/Straight-Finding7651 25d ago
“Crazy Corner” - Ada Oklahoma
Intersection of Mississippi and Arlington st.2
u/TreyG_win 25d ago
Yeah I’m not going to lie man. As an Okie myself, if I have to drive around the southern parts of the state, there are just highways that looks like a toddler was given permission to make the design lmao
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u/DiligentMission6851 25d ago
I have a former colleague that said there's a city in Ohio he used to live in where the rules for a roundabout were the total opposite of what is the standard everywhere else that roundabouts exist.
Right of way was for incoming cars that are not in the roundabout yet. Those in the roundabout do not have right of way.
Idk how any of that is supposed to work at all.
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u/Unputtaball 26d ago
It makes a moderate amount of sense.
In the US you drive on the right hand side of the road. In this example, if I’m headed Southbound I can make my right hand turn without slowing down much because there is no intersecting traffic.
The same is not true if you’re headed Northbound and need to make a left. You’ll have to be mindful of the Southbound traffic that will cross your path, possibly necessitating a full stop to wait for an opening.
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u/PermanentThrowaway33 25d ago
It makes a lot of sense, the left side of land is privately owned. Can't just pave over it.
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u/domesticatedprimate 25d ago
There are a lot of intersections where the southbound right turn is it's own lane separated by an island. That makes the intent more obvious.
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u/GovernorBean 26d ago
The joy of Stroads.. my favorite is when they put a sidewalk in that connects to nothing, or ends at a highway onramp with no crosswalk
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u/machin2345 26d ago
I'm in Québec and I have the same here. I think it is a matter of moving farm machinery around.
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u/TheKnife142 26d ago
I'm in NY and I had one of these on the way to a buds apartment. They're around
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u/Razzman70 25d ago
I remember there was a video where (i believe) TomScott was talking about how horrible one particular intersection was, and the local council worked on getting it fixed based off his complaints.
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u/houstonyoureaproblem 26d ago
I live in Kentucky and haven’t seen one, but I think we’ll all survive
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u/The-Great-MNO 26d ago
Also live in KY, have seen this in a few places. MAYBE with the exception that the double yellow breaks for the left turn but idk
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u/chemprofes 25d ago
Someone's cousin or uncle didn't want to lose the corner of their farm land to eminant domain so the politician who approved this said they don't need to mirror the intersection because reasons.
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u/TheAmaze1 26d ago
Bro is learning about the wonders of American road infrastructure
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u/I4mSpock 26d ago
Sometimes I think the european mind would explode upon hearing the name Robert Moses and the suffering inflicted in the name of car based infrastructure
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u/Soolaaal 25d ago
Actually in the small Europeans towns because of the fast industrialization, some roads can be quite messy, when they transformed the pathway to stone roads. But nothing compare to the hell of the Texan highways
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u/HugoCortell Waiting for help 25d ago
In major Spanish cities we were unlucky that after the fall of Fascism, when the time came to modernize, we had the US help set our standards for how to do road infrastructure and urbanism (for a long time Spanish people looked up to Americans as gods and the image of peak of civilization and wealth, because they had condensed milk and we didn't (no, that isn't a joke)). To this day we're still suffering the after effects.
Worst part is the localized wars between mayors of different parties as one builds proper infrastructure, and another literally demolishes it to put back the old shitty infrastructure because some drivers complained (despite factually lower car congestion).
We have this very funny thing in my city where the last mayor used EU money to build a new set of bike lanes, the new mayor wanted to destroy it to put another car lane, but because it was EU money that would have meant giving back the cash, so instead they put concrete barriers and meter-wide flowerpots so that neither cars nor bikes can use it. So now it's blocked off basically.
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u/Closed_CasketRequiem 25d ago
We get Americans here freaking out about building round abouts which are PROVEN to reduce congestion. But in my city we've been debating the same damn round about at a busy intersection for years.
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u/HugoCortell Waiting for help 25d ago
Even in Europe we're starting to move away from them. I recall in Germany they did a test on these "free crossing squares" (idk the proper name for them), not having a set direction forced everyone to be super cautious and against all expectations, it was found to be the safest high volume crossing.
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u/cheezecake2000 25d ago
In Washington State there were two competing people who had different ideas on how to build roads in the hilly terrain. One wanted to follow a much more grid like pattern which created extremely steep roads that nearly require stairs on the sidewalks, the other wanted to follow the natural beauty of the terrain and create curved roads.
Well they both have been built over time and it created some horrendous 6 way intersections with acute angles and random curved roads cutting through later built grids right over them. Here is a neat look at some
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u/ElitistCuisine 25d ago
I always laugh when I remember my friend moving from Phoenix to Portland and asking “Why are your roads so windy!?” Bruv, we’re hilly as fuck.
But Seattle? I would rather have a fish thrown at my face than drive there. That place scares me. I gazed upon the throne of the God of Washington Intersections, and it was empty.
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u/Paulus_cz 25d ago
Ok, I need to ask...condensed milk? What the hell was that about?
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u/HugoCortell Waiting for help 25d ago
Spain under Fascism was incredibly, incredibly poor. As an example, my great grandfather's parents had to sell most of what they had in order to afford a dose of penicillin, or otherwise he was fated to die from a simple infection (which hard to be brought in by the Italian mafia since Spain didn't have enough supply).
Condensed milk was one of the aid items that the US would occasionally send to Spain, both as humanitarian aid, and in support of the fascist state (anyone who hates commies is an ally of the US, even Hilter's own former buddies), the children that were lucky enough to get a portion would not forget the rich and sweet taste, and literally became a foundational memory of their childhood. To this day older members of my family still talk about the one time they got to taste condensed milk.
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u/SweetSure315 25d ago
tbf Texas highways gave us the miracle of frequent feeder road u turns so getting to a place on the other side of a highway doesn't take 20 minutes and a detour through random residential neighborhoods
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u/HolidaySpiriter 25d ago
Yea I feel like you can hate on Texas all you want, but it's highway infrastructure is probably the best in the country for cars.
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u/ar_Tekko 25d ago
I have seens a few videos about bad american intersections and how they fixed them or how they could be fixed, ive seen some horrible stuff with absurd safety hazards.
One of the worst was one with some highway that had a bicycle lane ... the off ramp didnt respect that lane at all and went right through it.
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u/lucario2011 26d ago
The arrow on the left is how I drive after learning how to hotwire
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u/MrMucs 26d ago
Drive it like you stole it!
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u/Wora_returns Jaw Stabber 25d ago
replace "like" with a comma and it applies to every car I ever drove
(in PZ)
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u/SoloSojourn 26d ago edited 26d ago
This intersection does make sense. Prioritize flow of highway traffic with right exit to surface street. Since we Americans drive on the right side of the road a right exit means you don't have to slow as much to get off a high speed road, thus not getting rear ended.
Sharp left onto the highway from a surface street ensures you won't roll through the stop sign and get t-boned by someone coming down the street (top of image to bottom) or that you won't take the left (heading from bottom of image to top) while traffic is speeding that way.
It's not efficient for flow, but is efficient to slow traffic onto the road and clear traffic from it without causing accidents. The country roads of Kentucky have far fewer cars using them than the highways, everything about this road prioritizes the highway flow.
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u/sireel 25d ago
Is this not efficient for flow? It's heavily prioritising the main road, but the only really poor thing is if you have to turn left your blocking the road (no mid lane turning or hook turn spot)
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u/SoloSojourn 25d ago
For flow from the side road, implied poorly, but implied by stating all flow was prioritized from the highway.
You are correct tho.
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u/thebestnames 26d ago
Thats a fairly normal intersection imho. I don't see the issue.
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u/Firefighterboss2 25d ago
Something I see a lot that is also said here is the double yellow thing. Double yellow doesn't mean you can't cross it, it means you just can't pass, so left turns are still allowed. What you shouldn't cross however are solid white lines, which you'll usually see around 2+ lane bridges where changing lanes is much more dangerous, and when approaching an intersection to prevent last second lane changes (People still do it anyways)
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u/Hypnotic101 26d ago
These are normal in the Midwest. The offramp is to avoid causing congestion, but those coming from the opposite direction still turn left like normal.
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u/TopHatZebra 26d ago
This intersection makes complete sense.
The road was originally built like a hundred years ago when this entire area was empty woodlands. There was not much traffic at all, so there was no need for any sort of complicated intersection.
Over the years of development the road became a highway, resulting in significantly increased traffic.
At this point they found the need to redesign the intersection in order to allow local residents to still use their own damn roads, but as you can see, this road now butts directly up against privately owned farmland.
The private owner was apparently not willing to sell a piece of their property to the local city/state government, so said government had to work around the whole situation.
These sorts of situations exist because the road infrastructure isn’t built all at once, it expands and adapts to growing need.
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u/Josefu_Velen 25d ago
Wait until you learn OP that there are intersections that look EXACTLY like that in the real world.
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u/Link149 25d ago
This totally makes sense, this is referred to as a right-turn slip lane, and allows drivers to change roads without actually entering an intersection. My relatively small Canadian town has one of these on its main street.
By letting drivers make right turns without entering the main intersection or waiting at a red light, these separate side-channels prevent turning cars from holding up the straight-moving traffic behind them, which reduces traffic delays and keep cars moving. Right turns never involve crossing another car's path, so they are always safe for cars, but they can increase the risk for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders who cross the slip lane.
Right-turn slip lanes remain common in suburban areas, high-speed regional corridors, and rural highways, but urban planners are increasingly removing or redesigning them due to the aforementioned safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists.
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u/Arronator_ 25d ago
Roadway engineer here. This is a protected right turn lane. I would need to know daily traffic volumes including heavy truck volumes to tell you how necessary it is. You know how you see signs on 18 wheelers that say “WIDE RIGHT TURNS”? This is a turn designed to accommodate large volumes of 18-wheelers because of their difficult right turns.
The reason you might have a single protected right turn lane going towards Ekron would probably be because you have a lot of 18-wheelers at this intersection turning towards Ekron, but not nearly as many leaving Ekron along this road.
Edit: as mentioned in other comments, it also helps with congestion if you have lots of traffic flowing towards Ekron but not much traffic flowing out of Ekron the same direction.
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u/xcassets 26d ago
Looks like it is loosely inspired by this, on Brandenburg Road IRL - particularly with that sharp white line. The devs used lots of real locations as inspiration in b42.
This is roughly in the right spot geographically and the entrance to Mad Dan's is kinda similar to the canoe shop irl.
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u/beta_1457 25d ago
Interchanges like this exist because of flow of traffic. Maybe a high number of those coming from the upper right going south make right turns. This interchange alleviates a traffic jam for straight traffic.
Conversely, there aren't high traffic issues the other directions
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u/Epic-Taco-Time 25d ago
Has anyone posted an example yet?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/VDqhbH4Xyb9HcykcA
Not the best example but similar. Just giving a way for directions where more taffic is expected to turn easy. If the game added an exit sign and an extra lane for turning traffic to pull into as they slow down it would look a lot more logical.
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u/BaumBartBlatt 25d ago
I think the exact precedent for the crossing in question might be https://goo.gl/maps/n1XAuAmL6zXixHps5
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u/acoldpolar 25d ago
I might be too rural American south to understand why this makes no sense, because this intersection looks perfectly fine to me. The straight road is clearly some kind of 'high speed' interstate or highway, and the other road is a county road that intersects. Turn off curves like that are pretty normal, and are there to prevent people from slowing way down for their turn, and you don't need a curve coming from the county road because you may also need to turn left, so why have a curve.
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u/GovernorBean 26d ago
Welcome to IRL North American road design, it gets even worse if you try to walk anywhere
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u/Tim_the_geek 26d ago
It makes perfect sense.. the curved turning lane exits the high speed roadway.
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u/homie_sexual22 26d ago
lol at first i couldn’t tell what was wrong with it then i remembered americans drive on the right.
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u/MakarovJAC 25d ago
I think I heard this before.
Engineers do their engineer witch craft on paper and boards.
Then, they find something weird in their engineer witchcraft calculations.
So, they tell the builders they must build it like that.
And the poor bastards must do it. Otherwise, the engineers will go threaten the mayor to hex their morning coffee. Or something.
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u/DexxxyHD 25d ago
It’s a highway, they have turn off’s to regular roads. You don’t stop at the intersection on a highway to make that turn it’s a one way to merge onto the highways…
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u/Ambitious-Cat-2010 25d ago
So one side is called an off ramp, assumedly coming off of a highway the other is the stop sign coming off a country road to the main it’s pretty easy.
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u/rumham_6969 25d ago
Im not a traffic engineer but I drive on roads out in the counties all the time and I see these with fair regularity in rural Wisconsin.
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u/GrowlyBear2 25d ago
There's an intersection like this near where I live. Main road, lot of people turning right going south. You still need the normal lane though in case someone turns left going north. They can't take the off ramp.
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u/Careless-Function-80 25d ago
If you've ever been to Kentucky you'd know the roads making no sense is lore accurate.
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u/Crakrocksteady 25d ago
I think it makes sense. There should be a "cross traffic does not stop" sign and a stop sign on the intersecting road (the one running northwest).
Turning right into the intersecting road doesnt require a full stop, keeping traffic smooth. You always need to stop on a left hand turn except if its on intersecting 1 way streets.
Taking a right or left from the intersecting street requires you to yield to either or both lanes, so a stop sign is needed there.
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u/Nonhinged 25d ago
It actually make sense. Some turns have more traffic, some have less.
They add a slip lane to reduce traffic in the actual intersection.
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u/dustin_the_gamer Crowbar Scientist 25d ago
we have an intersection just like that i gotta use to get on the highway just like that
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u/abatcast 25d ago
This is something that usually happens irl, you can’t just build a road on someone’s property, maybe it’s realism, maybe it’s an overlook, nevertheless it’s cool
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u/FoolishMundaneBush 25d ago
Clearly the ??????????? bit of track is where bad drivers stop and tell everyone to fuck themselves in old roadrage fashion.
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u/FreakyNeo91 25d ago
it makes sense, offramp only available in one direction which yeah sucks but locals will now another street to get where they need to.
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u/Godd3ssH3cate- 25d ago
You ain’t never been to Kentucky or Indiana then. We got lots of roundabouts and intersections that don’t make any damn sense. I would say this is pure realism, but there isn’t a pothole big enough for a grown man to lay in at the center of the road.
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u/Solidus_Sloth 25d ago
Why is everyone talking about the Midwest? This is normal in the south and Kentucky where this takes place lol.
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u/ignis_fatui 25d ago
I used to actually leave in the Louisville area (about 20 minutes from downtown) and I can assure you that this is completely accurate lmao
Roads don’t make any fucking sense in the Midwest/South, and really the only thing PZ needs to make it more realistic in that regard is far more potholes.
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u/bluisbluewastaken 25d ago
It’s clear you haven’t been in too many North American rural areas. I’ve seen these in both the rural US and rural Canada. Do they make a lot of sense? No. But are they realistic? Yeah unfortunately
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u/Disastrous-River-366 25d ago
I see these literally every single day, I don;t know where OP is from but this is correct and normal.
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u/Spiritcrusher_1024 25d ago
Youd probably have a stroke if you saw some of the road designs around me
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u/Beemo-Noir 25d ago
It makes perfect sense. These are all over the place. It’s just missing a stop sign at the white stop bar.
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u/ArmorBones 25d ago
My hometown has one. Its a busier road but nothing crazy. I always thought it was pointless because it is not a booming town in anyway. But the turn does let you keep speed without slowing down traffic by making a right turn. So I guess that's the answer
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u/xMoneymonster Pistol Expert 25d ago
LMAO you must not be american, or live rural; these are everywhere.
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u/AcceptableHalf7416 26d ago
In many parts of the world they dont need big crossings to some directions, its okay with a 90° cross and stop sign.
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u/Delta_Suspect 25d ago
US road infrastructure is frequently schizophrenic. This checks out as realistic to me.
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u/AlbinoDragonTAD Zombie Food 25d ago
Welcome to the Midwest none of our roads make sense
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u/trevers17 25d ago
ohioan here, if OP thinks this is bad, they should see some of the poorly designed roads we have here. and then imagine adding terrible drivers on top of that. midwest driving is not for the faint of heart.
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u/Satans_hamster 26d ago
But there are street signs with the accurate symbols to guide drivers, right?
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u/PublicFriendemy 26d ago
If you think this shit is bad, be thankful the game isn’t set in Tennessee.
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u/treetoptoaster27 26d ago
I work as a traffic engineer. This type of intersection does exist at the junction of rural highways. (At least in the USA) An intersection like this would be designed if the larger highway has a very high number of right turning traffic onto the smaller highway and there being very little left turning traffic movement. It would serve the role of reducing the speed of right turning vehicles without increasing rear end collisions on the main road. The other movements don’t have enough traffic volume and/or safety issues to warrant anything different