Americans who live near state borders,how do you notice you've crossed the border?

[bluesheep@sh.itjust.works]

I love that the Dutch talk the same way about the Belgian roads

[lifeinmultiplechoice@lemmy.world]

Also wherever the last hills are within 10 miles of the border there is a guaranteed police officer sitting on the other side out of view pointing a lidar at the top of the hill so when you go over they can clock all your speeds. More so on whichever border county is keeping their side up better.. but if your heading to say Georgia you can tell your almost to Georgia because you can see the Florida cops waiting for the people heading South on the other side of the road.

(Although in Florida they often lack the hills to hide behind so they often use bushes, drainage ditches and overpass walls to hide behind.).

More than a 2500 different types of palm trees/bushes. And on 75/95, they are going to be invested with pigs.

[iunnrais@lemmy.world]

Yeah, but… as you say. It’s an excuse. Give war on drugs people an opening, they take it. Anything to oppress the poors.

[blackn1ght@feddit.uk]

What's the point of putting the governor name on the road sign? How is that information useful to drivers?

[ilinamorato@lemmy.world]

It usually depends on how big the road is that you're driving on. Most state borders are in very extremely rural areas, so sometimes there's not even a sign. On interstate highways it's always quite obvious, but little country roads might not have any signage at all.

• There's usually no obvious change in architecture, no; often the only architecture is farm buildings, and those are more or less consistent architecturally. And broadly speaking architecture is regional, rather than state-specific; the difference in architecture from northern Indiana to southern Indiana is far more pronounced than the difference in architecture from southern Indiana to northern Kentucky, for instance.

• As noted elsewhere, sometimes the infrastructure can be different (usually seen in road quality), but most states tend to number their county roads in different ways, so when you cross the border you'll often find that the number of the roads you're crossing tend to suddenly shift from "300W" to "2300E." The signage may also change very slightly, though if you're truly out in the middle of nowhere, there might not be any signage to change.

• Agriculture, like architecture, is usually much more defined by region than by state. All of the states around mine farm corn, wheat, and soybeans, just like mine does. Most also farm cows, though Kentucky notably has a lot more horses than any of its neighbors, so that can be a tell. But you don't get into a ton of ranching until you get further west, and then you see large changes across multiple states at a time.

• Store brands often do change, but again, since most crossings are in rural areas, there often aren't any stores around to notice the change right away. You'll roll out of a state with a lot of Meijer stores and into a state where Publix is the regional grocery store, but until you get into a town, there's no way to know.

• Culture is probably the thing you'll notice least. People who live in rural areas tend to think of themselves as American before any other identifier, so you'll find a lot of jingoism anywhere on both sides of any border. American flags, Christian crosses, gigantic emotional support pickup trucks, bizarrely aggressive patriotic bumper stickers, Trump signs and flags, etc. Depending on where you are those sorts of things are accompanied by very clear signs of deep poverty (mobile homes, trash-strewn lawns, run-down houses), but they can just as often be on or around very well-kept houses on huge acreage.

• And if you mean "culture" in the sense of theater, music, etc., you're unlikely to find any at all near a state border.

I guess the other thing is that Google Maps will tell you "Welcome to (state)" when you're navigating. There are some times that that's the only way you'll know.

[jerb322@lemmy.world]

And toll roads....

[remon@ani.social]

[hobbitfoot@thelemmy.club]

I pay money to cross a large river.

[the_crotch@sh.itjust.works]

He legalized weed at least

[the_crotch@sh.itjust.works]

Air is free at every gas station in CT

[angband@lemmy.world]

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.

[klemptor@startrek.website]

That's strange, I grew up in NJ and our roads tend to be well maintained. It was kinda shocking when I moved to PA and the roads had way more potholes and skinny useless shoulders!

[the_crotch@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[frog_brawler@lemmy.world]

I don’t live in a state that borders SC, but I can think of no better answer to the question at hand.

[nagaram@startrek.website]

Ya know. I don't know. Every state does this as far as I can tell and so I've never questioned it.

If I had to guess, its how the DOT or Highway department shills to Tue new governor

"Hey look boss, we put ya name on da side of Interstate 69 from Illinois!,"

[aa5b@lemmy.world]

It’s totally legit highway info. Completely not grifting public money for the governors election campaign. /s

[not_rick@lemmy.world]

Not the easiest place to get to, but it sure is beautiful

[dumples@midwest.social]

I was going to say the firework signs are a sure sign you moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin.

[pradapravda@reddthat.com]

But it's a solid investment.

[pradapravda@reddthat.com]

A lot of territories end at a river, but when the boundaries were set for New York they asked for a buffer zone (10 miles I think?) away from the Hudson River. So it really is an arbitrary boundary.