We’ve all encountered troublesome highway exits where drivers are expected to swerve across multiple lanes to make the off-ramp. In some cities, those exits have become local villains. One hobbyist game developer’s current project is transforming Exit 3A on Interstate 277 in Charlotte, North Carolina into an enjoyable romp of vehicular mayhem.
Teaser footage of “Exit 3A: The Game” shows a colorful and chaotic jaunt on the infamous stretch of freeway with bouncy crash physics. Developer Mike Ramirez tasks players with safely navigating a truck to Exit 3A. The player’s truck can be loaded with a variety of Charlotte-related cargo. Beds can be filled with black and blue soccer balls, a nod to the city’s Major League Soccer team, Charlotte FC. Users can also haul orange beer cans branded with white maple leaves, referencing local beer produced by Sycamore Brewing. Ramirez told Axios, “Every time I show it to people, they go crazy about it. I think in the past five months or so, I’ve been taking it more seriously.”
In real life, exiting drivers are expected to move across three lanes in just 220 feet. Then, the off-ramp leads directly onto an intersection with North Davidson Street. Traffic can easily back onto the highway, further shortening the distance for drivers to reach Exit 3A. Charlotte Magazine explored why the infamous exit sows so much chaos:
Exit 3A was designed more than a half-century ago, when Charlotte’s metro population was around 281,000 people (today, it’s 2.8 million). Deputy Division 10 Engineer Sean Epperson of the North Carolina Department of Transportation says it was probably designed in the late 1960s along with Brookshire Freeway’s predecessor, the Northwest Expressway. He holds up a piece of paper: The State Highway Commission’s design for the interchange, finalized in 1970, is so old that there’s a handwritten note on it that reads, “NOT ONLINE – DO NOT DISCARD.” On another page of the plan, engineers predicted that 2,100 cars per day would use Exit 3A by 1995. Twelve thousand cars used it each day in 2022, Epperson says.
There could be an end in sight for the hated highway exit. A proposal was submitted last year to redesign a significant portion of I-277, including Exit 3A, for the modest sum of $717 million. Exit 3A is thankfully not as dangerous as Interstate 5’s Union Street exit in Seattle. So many drivers have crashed due to the dramatic drop to a 20-mile-per-hour speed limit that Japonik assembled a catalog of the most egregious wrecks caught on CCTV cameras.