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How good are American roads?

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252 points chmaynard | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rconti ◴[20 Nov 24 17:52 UTC] No.42196461[source]▶
> Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than rural roads.

There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with dissimilar materials, and leave.

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burnte ◴[20 Nov 24 20:42 UTC] No.42197899[source]▶
This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.
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ASalazarMX ◴[20 Nov 24 20:58 UTC] No.42198036[source]▶
This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.
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jakjak123 ◴[20 Nov 24 21:29 UTC] No.42198299[source]▶
Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished
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lo_zamoyski ◴[20 Nov 24 21:44 UTC] No.42198428[source]▶
Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the reign of Hammurabi?
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Carrok ◴[20 Nov 24 21:52 UTC] No.42198493[source]▶
I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is.

Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to enlighten us without assuming we all have history degrees?

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buildsjets ◴[21 Nov 24 15:08 UTC] No.42204995[source]▶
Wow. This was basic secondary school history when I was educated. The code of Hammurabi is considered the basis of the western judicial tradition. This baseline knowledge I would expect in any peer, it does not require a specialized degree or study. The collective infantilization of our scholastic standards is frightening.
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1. vundercind ◴[21 Nov 24 15:51 UTC] No.42205522{3}[source]▶
It's still in there.

You can find the US state standards used to set baseline requirements ("learning standards") for school district curriculums online, for most (all?) states.

Let's take an infamously-bad state for education ("Thank God For Mississippi") and famously good one (Massachussetts).

Cmd/ctrl-F "hamm" on this one to find it for Mississippi:

https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Page_Docs/final_2...

(Theirs is a little weird [probably because their government's, you know, bad] and this comes from a non-profit organization, but it seems to in-fact be the official curriculum standards for their actual BOE, as well)

Here's Massachusetts:

https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/hss/2018-12.pdf

Same deal, you'll find it with a search ("Hamm" also finds one occurrence of Muhammad, in this case, though, but it does get a few hits on Hammurabi)

A person may have missed it due to: 1) going to schools outside the US that maybe don't emphasize Hammurabi, or 2) moving between US school systems that don't teach Hammurabi in the same year(s), such that they leave one before it's taught and arrive at the other after it's been taught.

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2. jayrot ◴[21 Nov 24 17:46 UTC] No.42206731[source]▶
Another very likely explanation is that it WAS taught, but was simply forgotten. Which is completely forgivable.

It's not like 6th grade had an intensive 3 month unit on Hammurabi.