OpenStreetMap is a wonderful thing. Rather than relying on Google or Apple or Nokia to map the world, it taps a massive community to crowd-source, identify, and update all the world’s roads. And it also allows data nerds to create cool stuff like this.
Rory McCann took the mapping data and applied some math to figure out where the world’s curviest roads are, then rated them in 10 categories and color-coded it for his visualization. As you’d expect, the U.S. mid-west has some of the most boring roads on the planet, while the coasts, and nearly every other part of the world forms their roads AROUND the terrain rather than blasting right through it, have the curviest.
It’s an entertaining map to play with, and McCann through the source code up on Github and listed off the tools he used if you want to poke around.
Contact the author at damon@jalopnik.com.