One state is across a big river. Marijuana is mostly legal on the other side so the billboards start as you get close to the bridges.

The other state is culturally and geographically identical to the other side of the border. If you look closely you'll see that private liquor stores are allowed, as well as payday lending. That's it.

My friend visits chicago to Dayton Ohio often, he says the roads turn to shit the moment he crosses over to Ohio lol

That's crazy! Hope he never gets a retina biometric lock on his door.

There must be a lot of money in injury law, but no nationally-known firms, so your choice is either a referral or their name bobbing out of your subconscious from driving past it every day.

I live near two other states and can tell a distinct difference by the shape of the mountains (one has rolling hills, the other has very steep-sided hills, my home region has deeper valleys) and the building style since one state has lax building codes and the other has older and larger structures. The barns are typically discernable too.

State line road. If I'm driving north I'm in Missouri. If I'm driving South, I'm in Kansas. (Kansas City, Missouri)

Keeping in mind that I haven’t looked into this in over 20 years, back then the answer was technically yes but practically not really, or at least not well, and I’d be surprised if the answer has changed much in the intervening years. Radar has a fairly wide beam and most systems, at least at the time, would just leave it on all the time, so it would be pretty easy for a radar detector to pick up the signal while it was targeting other cars, well before the car with the detector would be targeted. This would typically give the driver time to slow down before they were targeted. By contrast, LiDAR uses a much narrower beam. IIRC the width of the beam even at some of the farthest effective distances was still about 3-feet (≈1 meter) wide or less, and the officers were trained to aim at where the front license plate would be. That meant it was quite likely that the targeted vehicle would absorb or reflect most if not all of the signal. On top of that, the LiDAR guns would only be active for a few seconds, so even if there was rogue signal that made it past the targeted vehicle there would only be a very limited window for the detector to observe it. It’s absolutely possible for the detector to pick up the frequencies being used, but more than likely if it was detecting a signal it would be because an officer was in the process of getting the vehicle’s speed so any alert would be coming too late.

I want to say Oregon but you can pump your own gas now there

Valentines work

https://www.valentine1.com/v1-detectors/

Connecticut is making a bold claim here to anyone leaving NY

Crossing the other way... Casinos!

There often aren't major cultural differences, not the abruptly, but there still can be changes. Sometimes the road will be 2 lanes on one side and 4 on the other. Sometimes you'll see a ton of new billboards on one side and not the other because they just bought a bunch in one state. Architecture? Not so much, I don't think, though it could be in some areas. Generally if someone is actively picking something while they're there,like building a house, it won't change, but if it's someone picking or choosing something from afar like what a road should be like or what to advertise it can change abruptly.

A good example is that in the past (not so much now), I-75 going south into Georgia began to have a ton of weird pro life billboards and Christian billboards once you cross the state line. Since then they have passed the line, but for real, it was a very abrupt change from none to tons of pictures of fetuses and talking points about when "your baby's" heart beat begins. As well as weird pictures of an apocalypse and Jesus that just sort of says "do you have a decision to make?" With no context.

I actually signed that last one's website's guest book to tell them the domain name on their signs was wrong, which was hilarious to me. It seems like the site would come before the billboards, so why wouldn't they notice the billboards had the wrong site? It was something like org instead of com, pretty minor. But sure enough they changed the billboards next time I went to Florida. So clearly someone is maintaining that site and those billboards. I just checked and it's still up, but it looks like they have some redirects now. So, maybe they fixed some stuff or my memory is fuzzy, this was probably about 10 years ago, definitely pre COVID though.

South Carolina is just a floppy extension of Myrtle Beach and mostly consists of the void you might need to cross to get to Georgia.

It's a weird state. I am sure there are some nice parts, but for the most part, I can't stand it.

You have to pay to leave the state so very obvious leaving!

You sure you don't mean Staten Island? It's a literal island of garbage, with garbage people living on it. Like one of the wonders of the world, but the opposite, whateve that would be.

Besides that, whether you're on 295, or 202 or 78, or 80, when you cross the river into PA, the road goes to absolute shit. But for the most part, the cities along the river aren't bad. You got Easton okay, but Phillipsburg sucks. New Hope and Lambertville, lovely. Trenton sucks. And yeah, I don't really go south of 195 except at the shore.

Sounds like Upstate New Jersey, hill country. That's pretty neat, though.

All my years in NYC and I never did go to Staten Island, and god willing I never will. Unless taking my tourist friends/family on the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and immediately turning around and going back on the next ferry without even leaving the transportation center counts. But the Staten Island ferry is actually free, unlike the Ellis Island ferry, so screw that.

And yeah, PA roads are… special. Worst I’ve seen outside the south for sure. Trenton area was mostly where I was going to and from, so that might be why the NJ/trash association is so strong for me.

More bumps on the road after crossing the state line.

Same when going from the Netherlands to Belgium.

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 ...

New Jersey?