• dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    There are roads just like this and more all over rural America. This stretch of curvy road is apparently on State Highway 42 in Wisconsin someplace. It is quite a wiggly stretch, but I suspect the perspective has been intentionally foreshortened here to make it look even more extreme than it is.

    Similar camera field of view tomfoolery results in infamous images like this one…

    …Where traffic appears to be driving up a sheer wall.

    Viewed from the side the bridge in question is still pretty steep, but looks considerably more tame.

    • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      A sufficiently large zoom compresses space to make things appear closer than they are. That’s how photographers make the moon look gigantic on a vista. Add that along with extremely small aperture will create a look as if things are close and totally within focus to give a surreal look. The focal distance trick only really works if you have close foreground though.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Still seems like that road could have been paved straight down the middle.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Possibly not. It’s on a narrow spit of land that sticks out into Lake Michigan. It’s probably as meandering as it is to stay on the thickest plots of dirt, to prevent sinking into the lakebed.

        There are various engineering solutions that could overcome this, for sure, but they’re all expensive.

  • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I get what the engineers and city planners were trying to do, but the implementation is a little “extreme”.

    Curves and bends in roads are used to keep drivers “awake” and alert to “changing conditions”, helping to keep concentration on the road infront. It also acts as a natural “traffic calming” measure to keep vehicle speed close to the signed or designed speed “naturally”.

    Straight roadway design generally leads drivers to slowly increase their speeds unintentionally as they become “comfortably” on a straightaway. It also makes the drive feel boring or “forgetable” which can be a signal a driver is starting to zone-out or loose concentration on what they are doing.

    More gradual bends to meet the roadways designed and intended speed would have looked like this. The bends radius increases as the roads “design speed” increases. Similarly as the “designed speed” decreases the bends radius needs to decrease.

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