Wdym?? Education wasn't discovered until 1867, when Jaques Education found a peculiar box that he opened only to find hundreds of thin layers covered in funny symbols. This was known as the first book.
Universities developed in the middle ages, they were not thing back in the roman times. They had other forms of higher education, but not in the form of a Universities that we have today
It works out to only about 10% more weight on average, since gasoline has weight too, and combusting that gasoline requires a far more complex and heavy engine. Here’s the weights of several EV’s and ICE vehicles that all fall into the same category of “mid-size luxury crossover” (i.e. similar sized cars)
There was a time when EV's were ~30-40% heavier, but this was early in their adoption. This was due to companies not wanting to take the risk of designing an EV from the ground up in a market where adoption was uncertain, so instead they designed their EV's by taking their existing ICE models, pulling out the engine, and then stuffing batteries and motors wherever they would fit. As you can imagine, this is extremely inefficient, and not how EV's are designed when purpose built. The biggest difference is that EV's try to have their batteries inside the floors, which isn't possible in a repurposed ICE. Imagine taking an EV like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and turning it into an ICE by tearing out its batteries and trying to fit the various parts of an engine together with the leftover space. You would end up with a car that weighs far more than it needs to and is horribly inefficient both in terms of space and fuel economy.
These aren't cars. These are SUVs without the extra length for more capacity, basically a sedan that weighs an extra ton. Hell, a Honda CRV 4000lbs and does the exact same as these examples except probably in engine performance (like that matters in your Mid(small) sized-SUV). The full sized Honda Pilot is 4600. A normal sedan weighs 2000-3000lbs. I hate the proliferation of SUVs being someone who drives a sedan because their headlights beam into my mirrors blinding me.
They picked cars that are marketed to the same demo as the electric cars they picked. Its a pretty fair comparison. There isn't an electric car being marketed to the Civic market.
Electric cars are a half arsed solution to pollution, but not all the other now blisteringly obvious problems to do with cars. And I like driving. But seriously, bring back trams, trains and bike racks on buses.
Most dangerous form of transportation per mile traveled, by far
Low passenger throughput
Enormous amounts of road space required to accommodate driving at speed, plus exponentially more for parking
Development patterns that favor car use are detrimental to other forms of transportation and to fine-grained, human-scale development
Electric cars help with exactly one of those. It’s an important one, but cars are so ingrained that I don’t think most people even realize the other are problems.
Probably my only concern about electric cars, the insanely heavy batteries mean an electric car can cause several times the road wear (compared to a similar-size petrol car)
EVs aren’t tearing up the roads; heavy vehicles like delivery trucks, work trucks, semis, and school buses do that. Compared to them, an EV is practically a lightweight.
Such a weird thing to include. Always surprises me when I remember that some people out there really do think a college degree is the only way to be educated or to be an expert in something.
In my experience the meme is implying the opposite. That college is useless and it is here just to brainwash people. That’s what the uneducated conservative idiots in my country say to make themselves feel better anyways.
Exactly. These guys may not have had degrees the way we think about them, but they had on the job experience…and years of it, passed down from one generation of builders to the next. That layering didn’t just come up by itself.
Didn't you hear? Everyone born before 1920 was a stone age idiot with an IQ roughly equivalent to sweater weather and we didn't discover planning, measuring, leverage, rope, concrete, or metal until 1940.
actually. an infrastructure project that outlives the civilization that built it by over 1000 years is the definition of "overbuilt". Any fool can build a bridge; it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands. So on the one hand, yes the person who made the comic missed the point, but on the other hand, they missed the point by such a slim margin
The Roman empire no longer exists. Roman aqueducts still exist, however. It can be argued that, since these structures outlasted the Roman empire by more than a millennium, too many resources were invested into their construction. Fortunately for the Romans, most of that investment was slave labor, so it didn't really impact their bottom line much
It's a bit like engineers in 1800 building a really good canal that would last for 1000 years. 20 years later someone else builds a railway and it doesn't matter how good your canal is, it's redundant.
Build a road to last a hundred years, and 30 years later you'll dig it up because it needs to be bigger, it's now in the wrong place, or we need it to support some technology the designers didn't know about when they built it.
If the natural conclusion of that logic is to build structures that need constant repair or replacement in case a change needs to be made or a never-conceived-of-technology was invented, I'd still say it's pretty nonsensical in almost any practical scenario.
The point is not so much that you're planning for the replacement, but that resources spent on building something indestructible instead could have been spent on building something else that was needed.
We’re living in the age where technology advances faster than we can adapt. If you make an automated customer service system with the biggest chat tree possible (manually pre-creating responses to any question the customer may have) will be obselete due to the rise of LLMs.
While you don’t know what will change, the only thing that won’t is change itself.
Because innovation will happen and if your things are build to last forever then you're kinda fucked. For exemple a house from 1547 will be less good than a house from 1900.
Have you taken an engineering class? This is the perspective I’ve seen in every engineering text. Like intro to civil engineering my professor said that exact thing about it takes an engineer to make a bridge barely stand
It's not necessarily expecting society but more of expecting needs changing in the future. Building a heavy traffic road to a mining town that would last for 1000 years wouldn't make sense. The mines would slow down way before that. You wouldn't want one that would crumble after 5 years, but it's about trying to find the best balance.
I don't agree with that argument at all. The alternative is to build an aqueduct (which is a vital part of civilization) that eventually breaks and needs replacing. The aqueduct lasting longer than the empire is an achievement, not a negative.
Sure, but it wasn't just the Roman Empire crumbling.
Humanity as a whole stopped using these aqueducts a long time ago.
They've clearly outlasted their utility. To the Roman empire and to all human beings.
I personally get your point, but even if it wasn't overbuilt to hell it's still a massive project that would take a ton of lives and money. And if it needed frequent repairs, that would mean overall more costs + more corpses.
I'm pretty sure both economics and reality agree that genocidal slavery is extremely economically beneficial for a nation. Modern economics is just focused on not enacting genocidal slavery.
However, if we look at the cost of building a road, say, and then rebuilding it, and then rebuilding it again (etc.) there may come a point where replacing it for the nth time becomes more costly in terms of time or resources than the cost of over-engineering the structure and having it outlast your civilization by 1000 years.
Or at least that's what I think NoTryAgaiin seems to be arguing here, if I had to hazard a guess.
Yeah his argument is predicated on the fact that 1. It's possible to build a less efficient structure. 2. It is more efficient to do so ( you would save resources that could be spent elsewhere)
But the adage "any fool can build a bridge, engineers can build one that barely stands" is also predicated on the cost to have engineers. At some level it's more efficient to be the fool and overengineer than to spend resources having something "engineered" and investing in engineers.
I doubt there's that much of an efficiency bonus over making less stable aqueducts, when you not only incorporate the risk factor and the assumption that engineers can even find you savings, rather than just making the probably slightly more expensive options of just doing it right lmao.
Basically, I'm saying that the difference between a 500 year aquadeuct and a 1000 year aquadeuct might just be like 2 bricks. What's the point of expending effort 1. Figuring that out and 2. Implementing it?
It is something that the descendants of the Roman Empire still use, that is the people who live where the Roman Empire was. If you only consider yourself, you’d be an asshole and consider it a waste. If you care about mankind as a whole, this is a gift from the Roman people to generations of people, many of which are their descendants. Should no one plant a tree whose shade they will not personally get to enjoy for eternity?
Such weird advice, the anti-buy it for life argument. Do you live in a cardboard box in fear of your brick veneer outlasting you?
This is exactly the ideology (i.e. the ideology of orthodox economics) that, combined with linear optimization, is responsible for an enormous amount of waste, but within the symbol-language of the ideology itself, that waste is considered efficiency.
I’m trying to understand what you are saying, please correct me if I get any of this wrong.
‘The waste that is considers efficiency’ part is all the potential resources that could have been saved, and put to use elsewhere, if they didn’t over engineer the roads?
If you look at it from a systems perspective, instead of thinking about the project as a closed system, think of it as an open system. Yes, the project saves resources, but those resources come from the not-so-distant future, or from other human beings with their own budgets. Capitalists tend to think of resources being saved in these cases (since they didn't have to pay for uses of the road that they didn't profit from; politicians, too, want roads to become obsolete the same day they are no longer in office since that's most efficient). Working people tend to view it as a form of resource waste, as it is our time that is wasted every time the cheaply-built roads need patched.
That’s only true if a) building it cost significantly more resources than building a crappies version and b), most importantly, of your litmus test isn’t “all of the aqueduct still standing” but “some of the aqueduct still standing”. Since it’s really important for an aqueduct for ALL OF IT to work, your argument is absolutely moot.
Important Detail missing. Those structured survived because of their cement used.
They were Not necessarily overbuild. Its Just that the cement they use is selfhealing.
Those dumbasses didn't even know about planned obsolescence! If they had made their aqueducts out of worse material, they could have converted it to a subscription service and the empire never would have fallen!
such a ridiculous argument. the Romans weren't planning on falling apart after building them so they put in the effort to make something that would last assuming they would still be around to need it.
since these structures outlasted the Roman empire by more than a millennium, they invested too many resources into its construction? should a hammer only be able to sink 100 nails before breaking apart lest it outlive its usefulness? countless artefacts from countless lands have been discovered lasting 1000s of years, in this weird economic dystopia should all of them have been lost?
perhaps an empire as economically savvy as you existed but there's no more evidence of it. Perfect economics at the cost of legacy.
It's an incredibly stupid comment. They seem to be arguing that the Romans wasted resources by building things that lasted longer than the empire was in existence. This is totally divorced from reality for multiple reasons.
Even if the road could "last forever" there would still be significant roadwork whenever there needs to be expansion or if any infrastructure was placed under the road (ex sewage, drainage, power, telecom) and that infrastructure needs expansion.
We obviously shouldn't build things to be completely disposable but there is a balance between investing in a long-term construction and overbuilding something that will just get ripped up for other reasons.
Yeah... But guess which one's cheaper for the people who administrate the money you spent on taxes to spend on? And where will the money they didn't spend on that go?
Also, the resources required to build a road that lasts forever might have only been 2x the amount to build a road that lasted 10 years, so if they get 20 years out of it, it will have been worth it.
I honestly think we should swallow that 4x cost. If you replace a road 4 times (which I imagine is less than the average) in its lifetime you are already spending the exact same amount yet traffic doesn't get backed up and business is not impaired.
The problem you have is assuming roads or other infrastructure remain the same forever. A road that can last forever but is replaced in ten years because the city needs a bigger road...ain't doing much. Also a road that lasts forever but is ripped up for mass transit rail, was overbuilt.
You also need to keep people employed, so permanent is bad. Having all your labor without a job because you built it to last, yeah, that's bad.
Also Roman roads didn't last forever so the whole premise is silly.
This is probably the worst economic view ever made. As NoTryAgaiin pointed out, structures that need to be replaced frequently will eventually end up costing more than if you had just built a better structure. As AceofSpades32 points out, these roads were used throughout European history and are still in use today, so the idea that they were overbuilt because they lasted longer than necessary is false. In later replies you seem to argue that it was overbuilt because it lasted longer than the Roman civilization that built it. But the Romans had no idea how long their civilization would last, so building their roads to last forever was arguably the only smart choice if they wanted them to last throughout the empire. Even then, that's assuming that the Romans were only intending for it to last throughout the empire. The roads were able to serve a purpose to humans outside of the empire long after the fall of Rome, which anyone besides an extreme nationalist would see as that road providing extra value.
This philosophy of "build it so it barely stands" is typically referred to as planned obsolescence. It's the reason why your PS4 broke down within a year or two of the release of the PS5, the reason why new laundry machines break down after 5 years while your grandma's laundry machine from 1975 still works, and probably the reason why cars made today don't last much longer than cars made in the 90's. It's an economic philosophy that's strongly pro-corporation and anti-consumer.
As a side note, though, this philosophy is probably not why roads today don't last. As the antimeme points out, automobiles are much heavier than humans or ancient carts and thus put much more force on the road. We simply don't have a good solution for potholes besides filling them in as they come up.
Structures that are overbuilt take more time, effort, and resources to build to begin with. Grandma's washing machine from 1975 uses a literal order of magnitude (in both power and wasted water) more energy to do the same, or worse, job, probably less safely.
Structures that are overbuilt are less efficient uses of space, requiring yet further construction to meet the equivalent use.
Sometimes older structures still need to be replaced even if they're potentially functional, because we can't predict the use-cases and needs of the future.
Old town planning that no longer serves the needs of current populations wastes resources as people travel around.
The typical planned lifespan of a current 'barely stands' building is measured in multiple decades. Arguing that a building that 'only' lasts for like 50-70 years is the same as a washing machine that fucks up the moment the warranty is up is asinine.
If you want to advocate for ecologically minded structures, whining that a building should last hundreds, rather than dozens, of years is not the way to do it.
They are still used as footpaths, sometimes as a person's driveway - but as roads, they were replaced hundreds of years ago.
The sections that are in perfect condition are so because they were abandoned soon after their construction, and have been preserved beneath dirt for most of their history.
just because it has positive impacts into the present doesn't mean it was a good investment decision on the part of the Romans. We are talking about new construction projects. If I am actively being taxed to fund infrastructure projects, I want that investment to be efficient; I want the person designing the new road to define a sensible cost function and minimize it for the given design targets
Can you explain why you think the roads were overbuilt. Don’t just say it’s because they existed for centuries, because that makes no sense. It’s literally just bricks in the ground. Explain why that’s overdeveloped and a bad thing.
straight lines are easier to draw and easier to survey, but they are not generally the lowest-cost solution for a road from point-a to point-b over wild terrain. someone with modern mathematical minmaxing techniques would have realized that the construction and maintenance costs of the Via Appia wouldn't be nearly as high as they were in reality had the first 90km not gone straight through a marsh
Straight lines are the quickest route between any points. Is it probable that the construction and maintenance were secondary considerations to the revenue and prestige generated by reducing travel time?
Exactly. Look at the damn pyramids. No shit those are still standing after more than 4000 years they are the definition of overbuilt and stable af. Nowadays we could do the same but upside down and put a pool up top and have the audacity to put it in the middle of the most densily polulated area in human history. Our natural desire to defy nature is as much a detrement to our species as it's something to be admired.
and by "barely stand", here for legal, regulatory, and convention purposes the "safety margin" is actually a maximum load tolerance precisely 1.5x over the design load, for most civil engineering projects. for aerospace, you're looking at safety margins waaaaay closer to unity
Mass of an average person is ~50-90kg. Average speed of a person walking is ~5km/h
Mass of an average car is ~1500-2500kg. Average car speed is ~60-120km/h
Mass of an average truck is ~15,000-35,000kg and average speed is 60-80km/h
I'm not an engineer, but something tells me that it wouldn't end very well if you drove a couple semi trucks going 80km/h over these 'overbuilt' roads, they would no longer be overbuilt... Heck, they wouldn't even be considered built any more at that point.
If it cost 1,000 resources to build a road that lasts two years, and 2,000 resources to build a road that lasts forever, then it's well worth it to just build the one that lasts forever.
Overbuilding isn't necessarily an inefficient use of resources.
As an engineer, I have to disagree. I work on systems designed to last for decades with a high margin of safety. Sure, there's such a thing as over engineering, but you also want to beat just barely good enough. There's a sweet spot that lies somewhere between the cheapest possible option and something that will still be here to baffle alien archaeologists long after we're gone. With critical infrastructure, I recommend you lean towards the latter end of that spectrum.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Oh there are plenty of people that believe that degrees somehow make you dumb. Half my extended family likes to walk around pretending they’re lighting the world on fire with their brilliance while the “educated idiots” ruin everything.
Is it though? The discipline of engineering is based largely on reducing costs to the absolute minimum, using optimization techniques. The result is that existing inventions are made cheaper since the builder of roads has no selfish motivation for those roads to exist for hundreds or thousands of years.
It makes it sound like engineers just rolled in with their stupid “roads that can’t withstand being repeatedly rolled over by machines much stronger and heavier than horses and carriages” and ruined everything
Yes, it’s stupid. Those roads in the past required maintenance just like modern roads, and would not stand up to the strain of modern traffic. They do not “last for eternity.”
The discipline of engineering is based on making things work. Accountants and product managers are the ones who push cost reductions, which forces engineers into the precarious position of making things work despite being cheap, so you end up with products that barely work.
Every engineer would rather have a solid reliable product, but we don't call the shots
They also had degrees or at least the time period equivalent. The meme is acting like a bunch of random Romans just got together to build a road instead of a bunch of skilled engineers working together and iterating on each others work over time.
roman road don't even last that long, nowadays they've either rebuild with asphalt because they're in a good position to be used, or you see the slight mark they left on terrain while the actual road is far gone. and still, asphalt roads are used because even the ones with tons of holes are gonna last longer than roman roads made of dirt and stone, they just don't need constant repair since they're made of fucking asphalt
There should be a game show where the anti-intellectuals have to build infrastructure, since apparently it doesn't require any formal education or training
The octagon is saying that modern roads (and the engineers that build them) suck. OP changed it to say cars suck (or at least damage roads more than pedestrians/carriages)
Cars have increased the amount of wear on roads significantly, but it's also worth noting that brick roads that are also driven on by cars seem to last a little better. This may be due to the decreased speeds on these roads, but it also may be due to companies using fairly cheap materials for construction projects in the US.
I don't think we've gotten dumber, but I do think there's something to be said about how well modern style roads last compared to ones built with more classical methods.
I think the biggest issue I always see with these discussions is everyone running with assumptions instead of actually looking at the very real reasons we do things the way we do them now. Brick roads absolutely still fail and there are countless examples of ones that have failed and been paved over. The ones that survive to the modern day are there because they're often in historical communities that pay a premium to maintain them.
On top of that, something like the US interstate system could never have been built using Roman or Victorian methods. It takes a long damn time to build a road out of bricks or cobblestones. The people who designed 19th century brick roads are the same people that abandoned them for asphalt and concrete once the technology and industry was available.
The reality is that modern roads are very good at their job and very cost efficient. That means they're more likely to be maintained over the long run, instead of just being abandoned. One last point, brick roads have stood the test of time in a few places, but I can virtually guarantee you they have not survived anywhere that semi trucks pass over. Cars are a drop in the bucket compared to the stress and damage an 80,000lb trailer doing 70mph imparts.
italian here
these type of road still exist and usable, ofc they’re not comfy for your car but still usable. plus i wouldn’t say that romans didn’t have decease back then
nuh huh. everyone knows degrees were invented to dumb down people and make them believe stupid things like asphalt is better than cobblestone roads or that the earth is round, duh.
Pretty sure the people who designed and planned those roads absolutely would have had the equivalent of a degree, whatever that might be in their time. The fact that people hadn't yet formalized the college process doesn't mean people didn't go into specific fields of learning.
Thank you. The title annoyed me, so i did some googling and apparently apprenticeships were common in ancient rome, some several years long. So that was their equivalent to "degrees" i guess.
For real. The caption is beyond stupid.
As if people are incapable of attaining expert level knowledge and mastery of a subject unless they have a degree from a university.
The original of this image is still one of the dumbest "memes" I've seen. One, because who the fuck would think to hate on engineering of all things? Literally the thing that makes every technical aspect of our lives function. Two, because of course there's a difference between a road which would only serve to let horses and carriages traverse and another that has to support the weight of thousands of cars every day. Three, because Romans did, in fact, have engineers. Architectural wonders like the many famous buildings and the aqueduct weren't built out of sheer human will.
Pretty sure its because of the corrupt government officials cheaping out on the resources and quality of the materials rathen than Engineers or Automobiles ????
Trucks are 80,000lbs for a fully loaded 18 wheeler.
Just a single horse can be over 1,000lbs, big draft horse 2,000lbs. Couple of draft horses or oxen pulling a wagon fully loaded and you're up to a few tons. Which explains why those ancient roads had ruts from cart wheels.
Even with high-quality materials. The amount of stress we put on roads today is significantly worse than what we did even 150 years ago.
We actually could do a fair but imto improve the longevity of our roads in some ways. But it would mean making other sacrifices. If we made all of our roadways flat concrete they would last much longer. But the driving experience would be bumpier and the road noise would be a significantly increase, so you will never see that happen in or near any residential area.
Roman roads that were regularly in use absolutely showed signs of wear with carts carving deep grooves into the roads.
Some roads were well preserved. SOME. The majority were just as shitty and pot hole filled as today is not more-so. The ones that were preserved are generally ones that were well maintained because they were in wealthy areas with regular repair up until the point they were suddenly buried/abandoned effectively freezing them in time as they were. Also they were made of stone which is pretty hard stuff and more resistant to weather erosion BUT SHIT FOR DRIVING ON. My god, could you imagine going 60MPH+ on a road made of large cobble stones?
It's less about automobiles, and more about weight, dead easy repair, and repeatedly having to dig up roads to put new municipal water, sewer, and electrical lines.
This is kind of a bit of a strange statement though. Yes, they did not have the college degree back then, but they had very smart engineers, just like today.
Yeah modern roads are also way cheaper, faster to build, and nicer to drive on too when properly maintained. If you had to spend as much time and money building roads as in Roman times most people would be doing the majority of their driving on dirt roads. Romans would be in awe of our modern engineering and technology.
The community has decided that this IS an antimeme!
something about wear on roads being proportional to weight per axel to the power of FOUR
Also, Rome had numerous universities. And other places of higher learning in civil engineering.
So even the 'no degrees' part is wrong.
Not to mention that the road types pictured are different.
And the prices
Wdym?? Education wasn't discovered until 1867, when Jaques Education found a peculiar box that he opened only to find hundreds of thin layers covered in funny symbols. This was known as the first book.
Oh I heard about that. Kind of like how running was discovered by Tachys Running in 491 BCE when he tried to walk twice at the same time.
It's such a dumb joke but I love "tried to walk twice at the same time"
Ai is going to love hallucinating all this shit all over someone's homework a few months from now.
It probably already is, this isn't a brand new joke
TBF depending on your definition of "University" and "degree" the system wasn't really invented until the middle ages.
Universities developed in the middle ages, they were not thing back in the roman times. They had other forms of higher education, but not in the form of a Universities that we have today
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It works out to only about 10% more weight on average, since gasoline has weight too, and combusting that gasoline requires a far more complex and heavy engine. Here’s the weights of several EV’s and ICE vehicles that all fall into the same category of “mid-size luxury crossover” (i.e. similar sized cars)
2023 Tesla Model X Long Range = 5,185 lbs
2024 Tesla Model X Plaid = 5,248 lbs
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 4MATIC SUV = 5,060 lbs
2024 Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe AMG 63 S = 5,578 lbs
2025 BMW X6 xDrive40i = 5,002 lbs
2025 BMW X6 M = 5,375 lbs
2025 Genesis GV80 = 5,029 lbs
2024 Audi RS Q8 = 5,512 lbs
The weights are actually extremely similar
Also cars are getting bigger basically competitively now, blaming it on EVs is crazy work.
There was a time when EV's were ~30-40% heavier, but this was early in their adoption. This was due to companies not wanting to take the risk of designing an EV from the ground up in a market where adoption was uncertain, so instead they designed their EV's by taking their existing ICE models, pulling out the engine, and then stuffing batteries and motors wherever they would fit. As you can imagine, this is extremely inefficient, and not how EV's are designed when purpose built. The biggest difference is that EV's try to have their batteries inside the floors, which isn't possible in a repurposed ICE. Imagine taking an EV like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and turning it into an ICE by tearing out its batteries and trying to fit the various parts of an engine together with the leftover space. You would end up with a car that weighs far more than it needs to and is horribly inefficient both in terms of space and fuel economy.
Peugeot still does this lol. An e-208 is still just an engine swap from the ICE version.
These aren't cars. These are SUVs without the extra length for more capacity, basically a sedan that weighs an extra ton. Hell, a Honda CRV 4000lbs and does the exact same as these examples except probably in engine performance (like that matters in your Mid(small) sized-SUV). The full sized Honda Pilot is 4600. A normal sedan weighs 2000-3000lbs. I hate the proliferation of SUVs being someone who drives a sedan because their headlights beam into my mirrors blinding me.
Lol no. Find me a normal sedan anywhere close to 2000lbs in 2025
Larger also avoids pollution regulations by reclassifying it, regardless of actual performance
When comparing vehicles that have ICE and electric counterparts, the differences are there.
Kona SE vs Kona Electric SE: 3005 lbs / 3744 lbs
Genesis GV70 vs electrified: 4167 lbs / 4982 lbs
Volvo XC40 vs XC40 recharge: 3806 lbs / 4430 lbs
Volkswagen Golf vs e-Golf: 2873 lbs / 3459 lbs
Opel Corsa F vs Corsa E: 3005 lbs / 3744 lbs
There's an avg difference of almost 20%
I was thinking those numbers were pretty picked from the person you replied to. My diesel 1/4 ton truck only weights 4400lb lol.
Like how many Honda civics are there on the road (less thank 3k lbs) vs 5600lb Mercedes GLE AMG 63S.
Yeah they went and picked a bunch of heavy ass luxury cars to compare weight instead of the most common cars on the road which are around 3,500 lbs
Still everything has gotten heavier. A 1995 civic hatch was 2,100 lbs and now it's almost 3,000 lbs
They picked cars that are marketed to the same demo as the electric cars they picked. Its a pretty fair comparison. There isn't an electric car being marketed to the Civic market.
That list is all crossovers, which are all oversized and overweight.
A base Model 3 is 4,600 pounds, a base Honda Accord is 3,200. The weight differences are a lot more drastic in other segments.
Well the solution isn’t electric cars anyway, it’s more public transit.
Electric cars are a half arsed solution to pollution, but not all the other now blisteringly obvious problems to do with cars. And I like driving. But seriously, bring back trams, trains and bike racks on buses.
Yup. Problems caused by cars and car dependency:
Electric cars help with exactly one of those. It’s an important one, but cars are so ingrained that I don’t think most people even realize the other are problems.
EVs aren’t tearing up the roads; heavy vehicles like delivery trucks, work trucks, semis, and school buses do that. Compared to them, an EV is practically a lightweight.
They are nothing compared to fully loaded semi trucks
There's also cost and build time to factor in. Modern society relies on roads much more while demanding they're built much faster.
Also the pure number of roads that must be built. What do you figure... 1000x the number of roads the Romans built? That's probably low balling it.
I bet the cost to companies driving on them is not to the power of four
"Without a single degree"
Bruh.
Clearly degrees are the problem
Let's give jobs to people with zero idea on how the industry works and look how it will go to shit
*Mike Rowe wants to know your location.*
Well yeah, they climb up every year, as if the climate was changing
Yep they just build roads without anybody knowing how to do it
Such a weird thing to include. Always surprises me when I remember that some people out there really do think a college degree is the only way to be educated or to be an expert in something.
In my experience the meme is implying the opposite. That college is useless and it is here just to brainwash people. That’s what the uneducated conservative idiots in my country say to make themselves feel better anyways.
Exactly. These guys may not have had degrees the way we think about them, but they had on the job experience…and years of it, passed down from one generation of builders to the next. That layering didn’t just come up by itself.
And presumably an educated overseer who made sure trese were minimal issues.
Didn't you hear? Everyone born before 1920 was a stone age idiot with an IQ roughly equivalent to sweater weather and we didn't discover planning, measuring, leverage, rope, concrete, or metal until 1940.
They didn't have massive 16 wheel trucks back then
Nuh uh. My buddy Mark used to drive his 18 wheeler from Rome to London every week for 40 years.
18≠16
show your work
🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞
🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞🛞
Damn I’ve been had
Damn, they proved it
Seems unsafe for the car to have 2 wheels on one side and 14 on the other. It would just fall over then??? Show your work better next time…
Foiled! Again!
Why not? Dummies. It would have made transporting goods way easier.
Organic
https://preview.redd.it/txgumvf3vf6g1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6fa420315cca5471a29428e847fe1c3fe85e518f
What a stupid comic
actually. an infrastructure project that outlives the civilization that built it by over 1000 years is the definition of "overbuilt". Any fool can build a bridge; it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands. So on the one hand, yes the person who made the comic missed the point, but on the other hand, they missed the point by such a slim margin
i'd rather the road last forever than need replacing in a decade.
The Roman empire no longer exists. Roman aqueducts still exist, however. It can be argued that, since these structures outlasted the Roman empire by more than a millennium, too many resources were invested into their construction. Fortunately for the Romans, most of that investment was slave labor, so it didn't really impact their bottom line much
This is not a perspective i've seen in any engineering text. Why you would design infrasture expecting society to collapse?
It's a bit like engineers in 1800 building a really good canal that would last for 1000 years. 20 years later someone else builds a railway and it doesn't matter how good your canal is, it's redundant.
Build a road to last a hundred years, and 30 years later you'll dig it up because it needs to be bigger, it's now in the wrong place, or we need it to support some technology the designers didn't know about when they built it.
If the natural conclusion of that logic is to build structures that need constant repair or replacement in case a change needs to be made or a never-conceived-of-technology was invented, I'd still say it's pretty nonsensical in almost any practical scenario.
The point is not so much that you're planning for the replacement, but that resources spent on building something indestructible instead could have been spent on building something else that was needed.
We’re living in the age where technology advances faster than we can adapt. If you make an automated customer service system with the biggest chat tree possible (manually pre-creating responses to any question the customer may have) will be obselete due to the rise of LLMs.
While you don’t know what will change, the only thing that won’t is change itself.
Because innovation will happen and if your things are build to last forever then you're kinda fucked. For exemple a house from 1547 will be less good than a house from 1900.
Have you taken an engineering class? This is the perspective I’ve seen in every engineering text. Like intro to civil engineering my professor said that exact thing about it takes an engineer to make a bridge barely stand
It's not necessarily expecting society but more of expecting needs changing in the future. Building a heavy traffic road to a mining town that would last for 1000 years wouldn't make sense. The mines would slow down way before that. You wouldn't want one that would crumble after 5 years, but it's about trying to find the best balance.
"welp, I was gonna eat dinner, but the Roman Empire is actually going to collapse in about an hour, so whats the point"
-famously, Romans
I don't agree with that argument at all. The alternative is to build an aqueduct (which is a vital part of civilization) that eventually breaks and needs replacing. The aqueduct lasting longer than the empire is an achievement, not a negative.
it is labor value expended by the Roman empire beyond what the Roman empire ever got to use; this is referred to in economics as a "loss"
"The Roman Empire" is not a morally relevant unit, whereas "the human being" is.
Sure, but it wasn't just the Roman Empire crumbling.
Humanity as a whole stopped using these aqueducts a long time ago.
They've clearly outlasted their utility. To the Roman empire and to all human beings.
Economics vs reality, economics lose again.
again, I urge you to consider the corpses buried in the foundations
I personally get your point, but even if it wasn't overbuilt to hell it's still a massive project that would take a ton of lives and money. And if it needed frequent repairs, that would mean overall more costs + more corpses.
I'm pretty sure both economics and reality agree that genocidal slavery is extremely economically beneficial for a nation. Modern economics is just focused on not enacting genocidal slavery.
There are actually a lot of economic arguments for slavery being bad, in addition to moral ones.
You speak as if the Romans knew their empire would fall. They planned to rule eternally so they built infrastructure to last their planned rule.
However, if we look at the cost of building a road, say, and then rebuilding it, and then rebuilding it again (etc.) there may come a point where replacing it for the nth time becomes more costly in terms of time or resources than the cost of over-engineering the structure and having it outlast your civilization by 1000 years.
Or at least that's what I think NoTryAgaiin seems to be arguing here, if I had to hazard a guess.
Yeah his argument is predicated on the fact that 1. It's possible to build a less efficient structure. 2. It is more efficient to do so ( you would save resources that could be spent elsewhere)
But the adage "any fool can build a bridge, engineers can build one that barely stands" is also predicated on the cost to have engineers. At some level it's more efficient to be the fool and overengineer than to spend resources having something "engineered" and investing in engineers.
I doubt there's that much of an efficiency bonus over making less stable aqueducts, when you not only incorporate the risk factor and the assumption that engineers can even find you savings, rather than just making the probably slightly more expensive options of just doing it right lmao.
Basically, I'm saying that the difference between a 500 year aquadeuct and a 1000 year aquadeuct might just be like 2 bricks. What's the point of expending effort 1. Figuring that out and 2. Implementing it?
It is something that the descendants of the Roman Empire still use, that is the people who live where the Roman Empire was. If you only consider yourself, you’d be an asshole and consider it a waste. If you care about mankind as a whole, this is a gift from the Roman people to generations of people, many of which are their descendants. Should no one plant a tree whose shade they will not personally get to enjoy for eternity?
Such weird advice, the anti-buy it for life argument. Do you live in a cardboard box in fear of your brick veneer outlasting you?
This is exactly the ideology (i.e. the ideology of orthodox economics) that, combined with linear optimization, is responsible for an enormous amount of waste, but within the symbol-language of the ideology itself, that waste is considered efficiency.
I’m trying to understand what you are saying, please correct me if I get any of this wrong.
‘The waste that is considers efficiency’ part is all the potential resources that could have been saved, and put to use elsewhere, if they didn’t over engineer the roads?
If you look at it from a systems perspective, instead of thinking about the project as a closed system, think of it as an open system. Yes, the project saves resources, but those resources come from the not-so-distant future, or from other human beings with their own budgets. Capitalists tend to think of resources being saved in these cases (since they didn't have to pay for uses of the road that they didn't profit from; politicians, too, want roads to become obsolete the same day they are no longer in office since that's most efficient). Working people tend to view it as a form of resource waste, as it is our time that is wasted every time the cheaply-built roads need patched.
Well I call it wealth. That's what I think Valve is building by investing in Linux
Sure, but it's an achievement for the future generations to look at how awesome that thing is rather than for them.
I don't think either side is wrong, it's just different points of view.
It’s an achievement that lowers maintenance cost for that generation and then some.
If the materials and labor was cheap enough which it seems like it was, it’s a good investment.
Just because something lasts a long time doesn’t mean it was invested in too much. That’s absurd.
Glass has lasted from that time as well but that’s just the nature of glass in general.
This kind of thought process is why the environment is collapsing
This is 100% the problem with modern thinking
Eugh, the modern mind falters when it's so easy not to.
That’s only true if a) building it cost significantly more resources than building a crappies version and b), most importantly, of your litmus test isn’t “all of the aqueduct still standing” but “some of the aqueduct still standing”. Since it’s really important for an aqueduct for ALL OF IT to work, your argument is absolutely moot.
Important Detail missing. Those structured survived because of their cement used. They were Not necessarily overbuild. Its Just that the cement they use is selfhealing.
Those dumbasses didn't even know about planned obsolescence! If they had made their aqueducts out of worse material, they could have converted it to a subscription service and the empire never would have fallen!
such a ridiculous argument. the Romans weren't planning on falling apart after building them so they put in the effort to make something that would last assuming they would still be around to need it.
since these structures outlasted the Roman empire by more than a millennium, they invested too many resources into its construction? should a hammer only be able to sink 100 nails before breaking apart lest it outlive its usefulness? countless artefacts from countless lands have been discovered lasting 1000s of years, in this weird economic dystopia should all of them have been lost?
perhaps an empire as economically savvy as you existed but there's no more evidence of it. Perfect economics at the cost of legacy.
Am I stupid for not following the logic here or is this just a tremendously stupid comment
It's an incredibly stupid comment. They seem to be arguing that the Romans wasted resources by building things that lasted longer than the empire was in existence. This is totally divorced from reality for multiple reasons.
The problem is that it takes a lot longer, and costs way more. The roads you use now wouldn't be better, they just wouldn't exist.
Even if the road could "last forever" there would still be significant roadwork whenever there needs to be expansion or if any infrastructure was placed under the road (ex sewage, drainage, power, telecom) and that infrastructure needs expansion.
We obviously shouldn't build things to be completely disposable but there is a balance between investing in a long-term construction and overbuilding something that will just get ripped up for other reasons.
Yeah... But guess which one's cheaper for the people who administrate the money you spent on taxes to spend on? And where will the money they didn't spend on that go?
Also, the resources required to build a road that lasts forever might have only been 2x the amount to build a road that lasted 10 years, so if they get 20 years out of it, it will have been worth it.
last forever and cost 4x as much. i agree but it should be pointed out that there is a downside to overbuilt.
I honestly think we should swallow that 4x cost. If you replace a road 4 times (which I imagine is less than the average) in its lifetime you are already spending the exact same amount yet traffic doesn't get backed up and business is not impaired.
The problem you have is assuming roads or other infrastructure remain the same forever. A road that can last forever but is replaced in ten years because the city needs a bigger road...ain't doing much. Also a road that lasts forever but is ripped up for mass transit rail, was overbuilt.
You also need to keep people employed, so permanent is bad. Having all your labor without a job because you built it to last, yeah, that's bad.
Also Roman roads didn't last forever so the whole premise is silly.
This is probably the worst economic view ever made. As NoTryAgaiin pointed out, structures that need to be replaced frequently will eventually end up costing more than if you had just built a better structure. As AceofSpades32 points out, these roads were used throughout European history and are still in use today, so the idea that they were overbuilt because they lasted longer than necessary is false. In later replies you seem to argue that it was overbuilt because it lasted longer than the Roman civilization that built it. But the Romans had no idea how long their civilization would last, so building their roads to last forever was arguably the only smart choice if they wanted them to last throughout the empire. Even then, that's assuming that the Romans were only intending for it to last throughout the empire. The roads were able to serve a purpose to humans outside of the empire long after the fall of Rome, which anyone besides an extreme nationalist would see as that road providing extra value.
This philosophy of "build it so it barely stands" is typically referred to as planned obsolescence. It's the reason why your PS4 broke down within a year or two of the release of the PS5, the reason why new laundry machines break down after 5 years while your grandma's laundry machine from 1975 still works, and probably the reason why cars made today don't last much longer than cars made in the 90's. It's an economic philosophy that's strongly pro-corporation and anti-consumer.
As a side note, though, this philosophy is probably not why roads today don't last. As the antimeme points out, automobiles are much heavier than humans or ancient carts and thus put much more force on the road. We simply don't have a good solution for potholes besides filling them in as they come up.
Structures that are overbuilt take more time, effort, and resources to build to begin with. Grandma's washing machine from 1975 uses a literal order of magnitude (in both power and wasted water) more energy to do the same, or worse, job, probably less safely.
Structures that are overbuilt are less efficient uses of space, requiring yet further construction to meet the equivalent use.
Sometimes older structures still need to be replaced even if they're potentially functional, because we can't predict the use-cases and needs of the future.
Old town planning that no longer serves the needs of current populations wastes resources as people travel around.
The typical planned lifespan of a current 'barely stands' building is measured in multiple decades. Arguing that a building that 'only' lasts for like 50-70 years is the same as a washing machine that fucks up the moment the warranty is up is asinine.
If you want to advocate for ecologically minded structures, whining that a building should last hundreds, rather than dozens, of years is not the way to do it.
I dont actually believe that any fool can build a bridge. not one id be willing to cross.
We commoners would prefer infrastructure that lasts, regardless of how inefficient it is for the lords.
You do not; you like to have 20 roads, bridges, etc instead of one.
This is a terrible argument. Roman roads have been amazing for Europe’s development and they’re still used today in parts.
They are still used as footpaths, sometimes as a person's driveway - but as roads, they were replaced hundreds of years ago.
The sections that are in perfect condition are so because they were abandoned soon after their construction, and have been preserved beneath dirt for most of their history.
just because it has positive impacts into the present doesn't mean it was a good investment decision on the part of the Romans. We are talking about new construction projects. If I am actively being taxed to fund infrastructure projects, I want that investment to be efficient; I want the person designing the new road to define a sensible cost function and minimize it for the given design targets
Can you explain why you think the roads were overbuilt. Don’t just say it’s because they existed for centuries, because that makes no sense. It’s literally just bricks in the ground. Explain why that’s overdeveloped and a bad thing.
straight lines are easier to draw and easier to survey, but they are not generally the lowest-cost solution for a road from point-a to point-b over wild terrain. someone with modern mathematical minmaxing techniques would have realized that the construction and maintenance costs of the Via Appia wouldn't be nearly as high as they were in reality had the first 90km not gone straight through a marsh
Straight lines are the quickest route between any points. Is it probable that the construction and maintenance were secondary considerations to the revenue and prestige generated by reducing travel time?
Exactly. Look at the damn pyramids. No shit those are still standing after more than 4000 years they are the definition of overbuilt and stable af. Nowadays we could do the same but upside down and put a pool up top and have the audacity to put it in the middle of the most densily polulated area in human history. Our natural desire to defy nature is as much a detrement to our species as it's something to be admired.
Don't give Dubai ideas
As someone who lived near the Key Bridge I'm not a big fan of bridges that barely stand.
and by "barely stand", here for legal, regulatory, and convention purposes the "safety margin" is actually a maximum load tolerance precisely 1.5x over the design load, for most civil engineering projects. for aerospace, you're looking at safety margins waaaaay closer to unity
Mass of an average person is ~50-90kg. Average speed of a person walking is ~5km/h
Mass of an average car is ~1500-2500kg. Average car speed is ~60-120km/h
Mass of an average truck is ~15,000-35,000kg and average speed is 60-80km/h
I'm not an engineer, but something tells me that it wouldn't end very well if you drove a couple semi trucks going 80km/h over these 'overbuilt' roads, they would no longer be overbuilt... Heck, they wouldn't even be considered built any more at that point.
Lol that isn't engineering that's economics.
You're letting economics make engineering decisions for you.
That's a level of dumb that shouldn't actually be possible under humanity's definition of intelligence.
Yet it is.
I don’t think “any fool” could build a bridge to the requirements that most bridges are built for.
If it cost 1,000 resources to build a road that lasts two years, and 2,000 resources to build a road that lasts forever, then it's well worth it to just build the one that lasts forever.
Overbuilding isn't necessarily an inefficient use of resources.
Any fool can miss the point by a wide margin. OOP must be a point-missing engineer
As an engineer, I have to disagree. I work on systems designed to last for decades with a high margin of safety. Sure, there's such a thing as over engineering, but you also want to beat just barely good enough. There's a sweet spot that lies somewhere between the cheapest possible option and something that will still be here to baffle alien archaeologists long after we're gone. With critical infrastructure, I recommend you lean towards the latter end of that spectrum.
r/im14andthisisdeep
― Isaac Asimov
Social media's mission statement
I had to recoil from downvoting the ooteca instinctively.
Oh there are plenty of people that believe that degrees somehow make you dumb. Half my extended family likes to walk around pretending they’re lighting the world on fire with their brilliance while the “educated idiots” ruin everything.
Is it though? The discipline of engineering is based largely on reducing costs to the absolute minimum, using optimization techniques. The result is that existing inventions are made cheaper since the builder of roads has no selfish motivation for those roads to exist for hundreds or thousands of years.
It makes it sound like engineers just rolled in with their stupid “roads that can’t withstand being repeatedly rolled over by machines much stronger and heavier than horses and carriages” and ruined everything
Yes, it’s stupid. Those roads in the past required maintenance just like modern roads, and would not stand up to the strain of modern traffic. They do not “last for eternity.”
The discipline of engineering is based on making things work. Accountants and product managers are the ones who push cost reductions, which forces engineers into the precarious position of making things work despite being cheap, so you end up with products that barely work.
Every engineer would rather have a solid reliable product, but we don't call the shots
Bruh those Romans were engineers!
Are the Romans not also engineers
Some of the best engineers in history. But they didn't have a modern degree therefore they don't count to this meme maker.
They also had degrees or at least the time period equivalent. The meme is acting like a bunch of random Romans just got together to build a road instead of a bunch of skilled engineers working together and iterating on each others work over time.
roman road don't even last that long, nowadays they've either rebuild with asphalt because they're in a good position to be used, or you see the slight mark they left on terrain while the actual road is far gone. and still, asphalt roads are used because even the ones with tons of holes are gonna last longer than roman roads made of dirt and stone, they just don't need constant repair since they're made of fucking asphalt
https://preview.redd.it/5ao2k4nakh6g1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03f8a5e5d6f88a4bb628552b18e904b7da035748
r/BeatMeToIt
I fucking hate whoever taught the blue collars to use editing software
Stupid fucking proles! They need to get back to work.
meme is dumb but this is a wild statement lmao
Engineer spotted. Come on, boys, let's teach this soft-handed nerd a lesson!
A manual laborer that works on roads probably isnt this ignorant, more likely some other dipshit science sceptic
I’m sure the Romans would be unspeakably offended that someone would accuse them of having no engineers or men of science
There should be a game show where the anti-intellectuals have to build infrastructure, since apparently it doesn't require any formal education or training
The implication that engineers just popped into existence one day. All that knowledge about infrastructure just materialized out of nowhere.
is this meant to say that cars suck or modern roads suck?
The octagon is saying that modern roads (and the engineers that build them) suck. OP changed it to say cars suck (or at least damage roads more than pedestrians/carriages)
Modern road I think.
Ok im glad its just anti intellectual. I was afraid the original was talking about immigrants doing bad construction work or something
I think this topic is a bit (surprise) nuanced.
Cars have increased the amount of wear on roads significantly, but it's also worth noting that brick roads that are also driven on by cars seem to last a little better. This may be due to the decreased speeds on these roads, but it also may be due to companies using fairly cheap materials for construction projects in the US.
I don't think we've gotten dumber, but I do think there's something to be said about how well modern style roads last compared to ones built with more classical methods.
I think the biggest issue I always see with these discussions is everyone running with assumptions instead of actually looking at the very real reasons we do things the way we do them now. Brick roads absolutely still fail and there are countless examples of ones that have failed and been paved over. The ones that survive to the modern day are there because they're often in historical communities that pay a premium to maintain them.
On top of that, something like the US interstate system could never have been built using Roman or Victorian methods. It takes a long damn time to build a road out of bricks or cobblestones. The people who designed 19th century brick roads are the same people that abandoned them for asphalt and concrete once the technology and industry was available.
The reality is that modern roads are very good at their job and very cost efficient. That means they're more likely to be maintained over the long run, instead of just being abandoned. One last point, brick roads have stood the test of time in a few places, but I can virtually guarantee you they have not survived anywhere that semi trucks pass over. Cars are a drop in the bucket compared to the stress and damage an 80,000lb trailer doing 70mph imparts.
italian here these type of road still exist and usable, ofc they’re not comfy for your car but still usable. plus i wouldn’t say that romans didn’t have decease back then
Correct. They absolutely had decease back then.
Memento mori
Et tu, Brute?
Only pedestrians, except horses and carriages
Also they effectively did have degrees
nuh huh. everyone knows degrees were invented to dumb down people and make them believe stupid things like asphalt is better than cobblestone roads or that the earth is round, duh.
Pretty sure the people who designed and planned those roads absolutely would have had the equivalent of a degree, whatever that might be in their time. The fact that people hadn't yet formalized the college process doesn't mean people didn't go into specific fields of learning.
Thank you. The title annoyed me, so i did some googling and apparently apprenticeships were common in ancient rome, some several years long. So that was their equivalent to "degrees" i guess.
For real. The caption is beyond stupid. As if people are incapable of attaining expert level knowledge and mastery of a subject unless they have a degree from a university.
Also: Slave labor. Do not recommend.
Roman soldiers built roads actually
What are you talking about. There are roads were cart goves are worn into stone.
https://preview.redd.it/1buv32ha0i6g1.jpeg?width=958&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2f1a99438bedc00f96ca6b90786003eabd9ea83
The original of this image is still one of the dumbest "memes" I've seen. One, because who the fuck would think to hate on engineering of all things? Literally the thing that makes every technical aspect of our lives function. Two, because of course there's a difference between a road which would only serve to let horses and carriages traverse and another that has to support the weight of thousands of cars every day. Three, because Romans did, in fact, have engineers. Architectural wonders like the many famous buildings and the aqueduct weren't built out of sheer human will.
Also, the idea that Romans didn’t do active maintenance of their roads and/or they didn’t degrade with use is patently absurd.
The ones that were built to last a thousand years are the only ones left. The Romans built plenty of shitty roads in their time.
allegedly, this road design depicted is also a misunderstanding of a design for a building foundation
Pretty sure its because of the corrupt government officials cheaping out on the resources and quality of the materials rathen than Engineers or Automobiles ????
It's because asphalt is much easier to replace.
if you had cats running all the time on roman roads, you'd need to replace them eventually no matter what, so it's better to use asphalt.
The real problem here is that no one is replacing the asphalt
Edit: I meant cars, not cats, however I'll leave this mistake here
It is also true. If you had cats running on the road it would wear down the road, just somewhat slower.
When I had read Cats I was thinking like Caterpillar trucks, so still works
Also true. The roads in the Pompeii ruins have deep grooves in them from carriage use, meaning they also didn't fix them then.
But at the very least... you can't fix a tire on a horse.
I thought you mean cat as in the heavy equipment which is also technically true
Partly, but it's definitely also due to automobiles. The wear and tear of a road goes up by the fourth power relative to weight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Which is why I believe that heavier vehicles should cost more to license and register
It does where I live and we have some pretty good roads.
They almost certainly do.
Nah it’s cars lol. Even good quality roads won’t last long being driven on by hundreds, thousands of cars a day
trucks are 40,000lbs, horse drawn carts maybe 500lbs… and now add in hogh speed to the equation, hard breaking
[deleted]
Trucks are 80,000lbs for a fully loaded 18 wheeler.
Just a single horse can be over 1,000lbs, big draft horse 2,000lbs. Couple of draft horses or oxen pulling a wagon fully loaded and you're up to a few tons. Which explains why those ancient roads had ruts from cart wheels.
Even with high-quality materials. The amount of stress we put on roads today is significantly worse than what we did even 150 years ago.
We actually could do a fair but imto improve the longevity of our roads in some ways. But it would mean making other sacrifices. If we made all of our roadways flat concrete they would last much longer. But the driving experience would be bumpier and the road noise would be a significantly increase, so you will never see that happen in or near any residential area.
Honorary r/fuckcars moment
Whatchu know ‘bout compaction stress
While this is true I'll never miss a chance to take a piss on engineers
Roman roads that were regularly in use absolutely showed signs of wear with carts carving deep grooves into the roads.
Some roads were well preserved. SOME. The majority were just as shitty and pot hole filled as today is not more-so. The ones that were preserved are generally ones that were well maintained because they were in wealthy areas with regular repair up until the point they were suddenly buried/abandoned effectively freezing them in time as they were. Also they were made of stone which is pretty hard stuff and more resistant to weather erosion BUT SHIT FOR DRIVING ON. My god, could you imagine going 60MPH+ on a road made of large cobble stones?
Behold the examples,
Exhibits:
A) Image
B) Image
C) Image
D) Image
"Oh wow sooo smoooth!"
i mean cars drive on them nowadays and they're still fine
It's less about automobiles, and more about weight, dead easy repair, and repeatedly having to dig up roads to put new municipal water, sewer, and electrical lines.
This is kind of a bit of a strange statement though. Yes, they did not have the college degree back then, but they had very smart engineers, just like today.
Damn it’s crazy that the roads have to be replaced every 5 years but the bike lanes and sidewalks last decades. Huh. Weird.
It's all the University Degrees. That's what destroys roads.
pretty sure they got that era's equivalent of degree
Yeah modern roads are also way cheaper, faster to build, and nicer to drive on too when properly maintained. If you had to spend as much time and money building roads as in Roman times most people would be doing the majority of their driving on dirt roads. Romans would be in awe of our modern engineering and technology.
The roads they built are quite far underground by now. The physical roads have not lasted forever, only the route they chose.
Oh they had knowledge we would concider be degree worthy
https://preview.redd.it/bjs1zna1dr6g1.jpeg?width=299&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d5c4be729496d07492f51f6833dde061f2d47f0