This Awesome Interactive Map Helps You Find The Twistiest Roads In The World

Maps are beautiful. You could scour the internet for hours finding weird and wonderful maps that chart everything from where ancient cities used to lie, to where modern countries would sit in Pangea. Well now we can add a new map to that list, and it’s one that might prove useful next time you’re planning a road trip.

A clever chap by the name of Rory McCann used OpenStreetMap data, and applied a formula to calculate the bendiness of each road. He divided the length of the road by the distance in a straight line between the two end points, which indicated how curvy the tarmac is. McCann split the world into a bunch of small boxes, with the box colour indicated by the average bendiness of the roads inside it.

The map shows that much of Canada and America’s Mid-west have very straight roads, probably due to the fact the extensively flat terrain doesn’t require curves. Aside from Germany and the Netherlands, Europe has a high density of twisty roads, which is probably due to the fact that roads were built up from older networks of travel built before cars were around.

You can check out the fully interactive map here.