Interstate highways in the United States were deliberately designed with occasional curves even in flat, desolate areas to prevent highway hypnosis, a dangerous trance-like state…

A closer look

Interstate highways in the United States were deliberately designed with occasional curves even in flat, desolate areas to prevent highway hypnosis, a dangerous trance-like state where drivers zone out and crash from sheer boredom. Originally spearheaded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s, the highway system was primarily built to allow the rapid deployment of military troops and missiles across the country in the event of a Soviet invasion, with civilian travel just being a convenient side effect. We owe our cross-country road trips to Cold War paranoia, and we owe our survival on those trips to traffic engineers who realized the human attention span is so incredibly pathetic that we will literally drive into a ditch if we are not forced to slightly turn a steering wheel every few miles