Besides the obvious “welcome to [state name]” sign. Is there a significant change in architecture, infrastructure, agriculture, store brands, maybe even culture?
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.
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.
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.
Ah yes, the Garden State. What do they garden? Apparently strip malls and trash.
We have great corn, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, and cranberries. It’s not all sprawl
Totally agree. It’s just sad to see the extent of the sprawl with seemingly no regard for anything except “development.”
What part of Jersey? Just curious. I will say, I’ve been happy with the NJ plastic bag ban because it’s helped some. Still wayyy too many people around here that don’t give a shit and litter.
Trenton area mostly. The bag ban wasn’t in effect last time I visited, so if it’s improved the situation that’s great.
The butthurt that I witnessed in Wawas and Grocery stores in the wake of the ban was glorious
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.
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.
Yo.
I want to say Oregon but you can pump your own gas now there
It’s usually on a highway and highways usually have a “Welcome to …” sign at the border.
I cross a bridge over a river
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.
Holy fucking shit the SC roads are B A D
It’s like Mad Max out here
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.
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.
Yeah most often the road gets worse /better, either because one state does a better job with road maintenance, or they’re just on different schedules.
Also sometimes the signage for state routes changes slightly.
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.
The same goes for the Netherlands and Belgium. Or at least it used to be, I haven’t been to belgium in years.
Wait are you coming from PA or DE? Because the Maryland roads near Virginia are god awful. And I mean the little roads as well as the Maryland half of the beltway that seems to always be under construction.
Coming from PA. As bad as MD roads are ours are worse
Right now just with signs, but if Wisconsin doesn’t get their shit together it will be a clearly marked, well equipped check point
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.
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.
The inspection station I pass by is still there, but it’s been literal years since I’ve actually been stopped or even seen it manned. I don’t make the trip regularly and have always been in a sedan, so maybe I’ve just been lucky. Though my guess is that funding cuts have hit them badly.
California has done searchs for ‘bugs’ before but don’t know if the still do.
I guess that is not “Bugs” as in butterfly?
It is stated to be literally for bugs, as in insects, for agricultural protection reasons. It’s in quotes though, because typically the real purpose of such inspections is to “accidentally” find other contraband “in plain sight” during the thorough inspection for “bugs”.
Ok, this is bonkers. Although the risk of contamination with foreign insects via transit is real (we e.g. imported the Tiger Mosquito from the US via tire shipments from the U.S. into Europe some years ago…), using that as an excuse to search passenger cars is quite a stretch…
Yeah, but… as you say. It’s an excuse. Give war on drugs people an opening, they take it. Anything to oppress the poors.
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.
Ok, expected this to be covered legally somehow.
Also as I assume that freedom of movement would be a value you are regarding highly in the States.
Yes! When you cross into Virginia one is greeted with signage expressing radar detectors are illegal.
Just owning them or actually using them? What are the fines?
It’s illegal to own one in Virginia. If you’re from another state where they are legal you’re supposed to take it off your windshield or at the very least turn it off if you have a more built-in kind. I remember they used to be relatively common in the ’90s and early ’00s but I really don’t see them very often anymore, so I don’t know if that’s as much of an issue nowadays.
Do those detectors even work against LIDAR? A lot of police use that now anyway.
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.
Valentines work
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.
Thankfully, I’m protected by my radar detector detector detector.
I still like to imagine fighter jets or attack helicopters swooping in to blow up speeders, or in more modern times drone strikes
This is perfect, because I vaguely remember the Virginia signs reading, “ speed enforced by aircraft.”
Not typically. You’ll see police along the major highways for speeders and the like but no state border patrol like that. Legally often transporting across state lines is a crime in and of itself but it’s one of those things where they look the other way unless they catch you using whatever item.
Often this is done for practical purposes, because if it’s legal in the state you started in, and might be legal in your final destination, they’d piss off more people that not of they stopped and confiscated from everyone.
Makes sense. Would also just generate work for the police forces with probably only low level violations to be uncovered.
Being practical is a good approach.
Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.
Yes! Texas/Colorado for sure, and Texas/Louisiana IIRC are noticable changes, but I can’t remember if the change happens right at the border or not. Texas is big enough that we get different road types in different regions, like different asphalts near the coast vs the desert, or sometimes per county too. In retrospect it’s super obvious. Awesome comment 😁
I mean, thats kinda exactly what happens when you go from German highway to Czech highway
Everything just instantly gets yellow and dusty
Most major roads have a sign. If I’m using Google Maps, it will yell at me: “WELCOME TO [STATE NAME]”.
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 Wisconsin from Minnesota, I will start seeing lots of fireworks stores.
When crossing into Minnesota from Wisconsin, do you see lots of dispensaries?
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.
I never noticed them! I don’t tend to pay attention to adverts though.
The limited distribution makes people think it’s a mind-blowing beer. It’s pretty good.
Crossing into Wyoming from Utah is hilarious for this. Suddenly there’s porn, cigarettes, beer, fireworks, and more porn!
