My state has piss poor roads.
Every time I leave my state the roads are noticeably smoother and less noisy.
It’s very distinct and almost comical.
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My state has piss poor roads.
Every time I leave my state the roads are noticeably smoother and less noisy.
It’s very distinct and almost comical.
I'm up in Canada and we have provinces here ... I live in Ontario and in the year 2000 me and a friend took a motorcycle ride across Canada to the west coast. Great trip.
But for motorcycle riders in Ontario, especially northern Ontario, its famous for rain during the summer, especially when you want to go riding. Sure enough in the first week of July that we started our trip, trying to make sure to catch the best weather for riding, we rode through rain for about three days as we drove through northern Ontario.
The funniest thing was ... as soon as we crossed the Ontario/Manitoba border, the skies parted and I could literally see dark clouds over Ontario and bright clear summer skies to the west .... right at the border of the two provinces.
We had great weather the rest of the trip! ... and sure enough when we did the return trip, we were rained on again in northern Ontario!
I pray for my suspension every time I go from Ontario to Quebec.
michigan?
I plead the 5th.
Lmao I was driving about 16 hours solo to get back to Michigan. Legitimately immediately after crossing the Ohio to Michigan border, the road contrast was so incredibly stark lol. Immediate potholes everywhere.
My state disallows billboard advertising, which I forget until I cross into another state and have to suffer through Jesus and injury lawyer ads.
you know, most roads will tell you. The change in asphalt for sure will tell you exactly
plus for me at least, Idaho is different than Washington
the roadside advertisements is instantly different
the highways are laid out in much different ways
the people are absolutely different almost to an extreme
Where I come from the asphalt change was how I knew I was in the next County
Nope.
The main thing you'll notice is a shit ton of stores for anything that's not legal in one state, or taxed higher in one state.
The rest of the stuff mixes together along state lines and there's no clear divide except for the legal/tax stuff.
Crossing into Wyoming from Utah is hilarious for this. Suddenly there's porn, cigarettes, beer, fireworks, and more porn!
Crossing into Wisconsin from Minnesota, I will start seeing lots of fireworks stores.
Been a few years since I lived in Minnesota, do you still see signs for Spotted Cow beer as you cross into WI? I had friends bringing trunks of sixers back and while I would always accept a free craft beer, I didn't understand the hubbub.
Major roads have a "welcome to wherever" sign but minor ones won't. They're always a clear delineation in the pavement, though, because neither state is going to pave one single molecule of distance further than they have to. And they never seem to be able to arrange it so that there isn't a noticeable bump at the junction.
One of my neighboring states also has some kind of pathological aversion to putting complete and legible signs for the names of roads at intersections, too. So the disappearance of all useful street signs is therefore usually also a clue.
North Carolina paves its roads. South Carolina air drops its roads.
You know you have crossed into South Carolina when the suspension of your vehicle is torn out from under you.
I don’t live near there anymore, but when I did you could legitimately tell when you crossed to NJ because there was trash absolutely everywhere along the sides of highway.
A lot of states in the south will also have a precipitous road quality drop at the state line.
Ah yes, the Garden State. What do they garden? Apparently strip malls and trash.
When you pass into Indiana, you're immediately overcome with this opressive sense of forboding and dispair. Also the roads immediately turn to shit.
Everytime I cross into Ohio I feel like I'm losing the will to live.
I feel that too, and i live here :(
field on one side, field on the other. if I am on the interstate, the surface gets really shitty on our side because brownback and the republicans in topeka drained the highway fund to give the koch bros and fat corpo-farmers a tax break.
I’ve lived near the Mason Dixon line for my whole life and you know when you get to Maryland because the roads aren’t covered with potholes and/or construction.
I'll never forget driving home from college with some friends for the holidays one year. I was from PA, he was from Ohio and had never been more east. We were headed to NY with another friend and our route took us briefly through Jersey.
"How will we know we're there?" he asked as the car suddenly lurched and felt like we hit a gravel road despite ostensibly being a paved highway ...
Well, I live on the Minnesota side of the Minnesota / Wisconsin border and normally I can tell I crossed the border because I have to cross the 4th largest river in the world, the Mississippi river.
Joking aside a big tell used to be frac sand mines. Minnesota cracked down on them much harder much more quickly than Wisconsin so you would see them all over the place in Wisconsin but not in MN. I haven't seen as many of those lately though. Also If I drive too far south I wind up driving out of the Kwik Trip gas station zone and into the vastly inferior Caseys gas station zone in Iowa.
There are 50 states and a lot of different border arrangements. If a border is something dramatic like a river and you know that's the state border you can tell.
Often the only way to tell is a change in road surface or signage, or the "Welcome to state" sign. Google navigation will tell you too.
I live on a border and my jogging path cuts through one state and then rounds back home to the other. The only way you can tell a difference is the states have different paving and road work schedules, so usually one state has more shitty roads then the other.
One comment mentioned that some things are legal in one state but illegal in another.
And I also remember that laws in general are often quite different between states.
So, I am wondering if there exist some kind of controls near state borders to catch illegal stuff and practices (or even wanted persons?) crossing the border?
they used to search all cars entering minnesota from wisconson for fireworks until the courts ruled that was illegal without a warant for the specific cars to search. This was around 30 years ago. California has done searchs for 'bugs' before but don't know if the still do.
in every case I've seen you don't see any difference but locals know and will bicker over trivial things like sport teams or best state bird.
California still maintains agricultural inspection stations. Based on the FAQ, I think the legal workaround they're using is that they can deny entry to a vehicle until it is inspected even though they cannot, strictly speaking deny entry to people.
Yes! When you cross into Virginia one is greeted with signage expressing radar detectors are illegal.
Yes indeedy! And to turn on your lights if your wipers are on, and to buckle up, and your speed may be monitored by aircraft. But pay no mind to the aircraft signs. The program ended up being way too expensive and they just never took the signs down. But do watch out for those cut throughs between the trees along the interstates because staties absolutely are hiding in there hoping for easy pickins.
And some have radar detector detectors. Turn your device off if you don't want an extra $100 added to your speeding ticket.
This would become quite a thorny constitutional issue very quickly. The 14th amendment explicitly specifies that one state can't try to prosecute someone for something done in another state that was legal there but is illegal here. This has further been interpreted to mean that interstate travel as a whole is a protected right, and any form of checkpoint or other hassle-station on a border between states would surely also be a 4th amendment violation.
That's not to say some idiot won't try it eventually, especially given the current political climate, but up until now it's not done as a matter of course.
A state neighboring mine got in big time hot water a decade or so ago for stationing their own cops in our state and tailing people out of liquor store parking lots with the aim of harassing them over the minutiae of the differences in liquor laws between the two. Obviously that didn't fly, because that state does not have jurisdiction here which means they have no grounds for a stop or search. Likewise, entering another state is not legal grounds for a stop and search unless that state's law enforcement already has some manner of articulable probable cause.
Leaving South Carolina to enter North Carolina or Georgia, the roads are so much better and there’s a noticeable decrease in overall loudness in road noise.
Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.
Heading west out of Connecticut into New York the most obvious difference is they don't trim tree branches over the road/power lines. It suddenly feels like you're driving through a tunnel of green. Its actually quite nice but those parts of nys must have a lot of outages after storms.
I travel a lot throughout the US, and sometimes the changes are obvious while other times I can be driving and not entirely sure which state I'm in just from looking around on the highway. As others have said while driving on a major highway a clue can be a huge store full of items like fireworks just across the border from a state they aren't legal in.
The geography and environment can certainly be a big clue. Driving through West Virginia there are tunnels through large mountains, Pennsylvania around the Pittsburgh area has steel bridges, Louisiana has highways raised up from the muck, there are mountains that the highways wind around in North Carolina that give way to pretty flat highways as you go south. Kentucky has long depressing stretches of straight boring road. I've noticed even traffic patterns can say things as Georgia highways always have a higher number of semitrucks than anywhere else for example. Nevada is flat and open but as you go into Utah it gets windy and rocky, and cell signal usually goes out for a bit.
Staying in different states I notice alcohol sales rules are different. In some states you basically don't see any alcohol outside of designated stores for it including no beer at gas stations, in other states you see beer for sale widely but hard liquor only at designated stores, and in other states hard liquor at WalMart is perfectly normal.
I've found on the whole that people are actually nicer than average in Utah. While coffee shops exist I have noticed in offices there is often a lack of a central coffee machine.
Louisiana everyone I deal with from there has a tendency to be much more relaxed than average about showing up exactly on time for things. Louisiana itself also has a cultural divide between the northern part which is more generic US south, and the southern part which has the more creole and tourist heavy atmosphere.
I honestly don't mind Ohio. I know it's an internet meme to hate it, but aside from their obsession with dumping chili on unrelated foods it's decent. Has a strong blue collar streak kind of like Pennsylvania culture.
Texas has a big cowboy influence and they don't let you not know it. The roads tend to big big and wide which is great, except the freeways especially in Dallas can become confusing multilevel nightmares.
California has lots of Spanish signs, lots of first generation Mexicans who bring culture with them. Lots of for example Mexican super markets. Californians have a culture of going FAST on freeways if there isn't gridlock traffic, in some cases going 100mph just barely keeps you up with traffic.
You should bounce from Alabama to Mississippi, night and day difference, which is funny because Americans lump the two states together.
We drive hundreds and hundreds of miles a year through backwoods Alabama highways, thence into Mississippi. There is one short stretch where the road is messed up. Going into Mississippi, the road turns to crap instantly, even the US highways are somehow underfunded.
Gas stations in AL are neat enough, in MS there's trash flying around everywhere. For that matter, you can tell by the small towns. Alabama side? Generally charming, though poverty is bad. Pass into Mississippi? Next town you come to will be a wasteland of poverty and ground down infrastructure.
Forest drops quickly in favor of farmland. AL is the most forested state in America. MS countryside looks more like Oklahoma.
Going from Florida into Alabama, you really can't tell without a sign, and there usually is one, or Google Maps announces it. The landscape and forests don't change until you've gone a ways north or west. Takes awhile to start seeing hills! Florida's the flattest state in America.
In NJ all the gas stations are full service only. If you try to start pumping your own gas the attendant will start yelling at you telling you to stop
I used to live in the US and travel a lot by car. The infrastructure, specifically the roads, their striping, their guardrails, etc. could change drastically at state borders. They could sometimes even be of different quality and material at county borders within a state.
The roads get better, the drivers get worse, there's jughandles everywhere, they won't let me pump my own gas, and there's liquor stores that aren't owned by the state.
Also I have to cross a river, and pretty much everything gets flatter.
For the other borders, mostly the same. One direction you start seeing more places serving crab, another has no sales tax, one is just boring and depressing, and the other unless you cross at some very specific places is mostly just woods and farms and shit that kind of blend into our own but with better roads.
The road surface materials and condition of the road changes.
Some states/towns limit billboards and tall sign poles. And some are very maximalist about it.