Is roadgeekery genetic?

[jbnv]

I'm beginning to suspect that it might be. My son, who was diagnosed with Aspergers, makes road signs and understands the roads in his area. My daughter, who has been diagnosed as "moderate autistic," plays with cars; I got her a play rug with roadways for Christmas and she loves it. I haven't been diagnosed with any form of autism, but I probably could be. The key factor: My children live with their respective mothers, and neither mother encourages this interest.

[corco]

My parents aren't really- but my grandfather was a roadgeek to a degree for sure. I'd bet he had a mild case of Asperger's. But man, he knew every backroad in southern Ohio and would often take us on insanely convoluted routes to get to places. He was a guy that could hold a conversation about anything and everything though, so I'm not sure if that was more an extension of that or a love for roads. I didn't become acutely aware of my own roadgeekery until about a year after he passed, so I can't say for sure.

[US71]

I'm beginning to suspect that it might be. My son, who was diagnosed with Aspergers, makes road signs and understands the roads in his area. My daughter, who has been diagnosed as "moderate autistic," plays with cars; I got her a play rug with roadways for Christmas and she loves it. I haven't been diagnosed with any form of autism, but I probably could be. The key factor: My children live with their respective mothers, and neither mother encourages this interest.

Not by itself (my father wasn't one, nor was my mom), but maybe there is a common "ancestor".

My father was an architect and a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. He had lots of books full of photographs of FLW houses and also took lots of pictures of interesting buildings. Even though I tend towards bridges and gas stations (and signs) I have inherited my fathers love for photography.  So much so, that someone who was looking for my dad contaced me because they saw my photos and somehow put "2 and 2" together.

[hbelkins]

My parents aren't really- but my grandfather was a roadgeek to a degree for sure. I'd bet he had a mild case of Asperger's. But man, he knew every backroad in southern Ohio and would often take us on insanely convoluted routes to get to places. He was a guy that could hold a conversation about anything and everything though, so I'm not sure if that was more an extension of that or a love for roads. I didn't become acutely aware of my own roadgeekery until about a year after he passed, so I can't say for sure.

I think I got a bit of it from my dad. On a family vacation to Florida when I was a kid, we saw several of the tourist places and ended up at St. Augustine. Instead of making our way back over to I-75 for the trip back north, Dad opted to go north on howevermuch of I-95 was completed at the time so he could drive north on US 25 from its southern terminus (since US 25 was a road we'd always used and lived within an hour of). We drove all of 25 in Georgia and South Carolina, but he opted to take I-40 out of Asheville instead of going ahead and clinching 25 in North Carolina and Tennessee.

When I got old enough to drive and started doing a few sightseeing/roadgeeking trips in the area, he'd often go with me.

He always wanted to get the newest copy of the official Kentucky map when it came out each year.

He certainly didn't take roadgeekery to the extent that I have, but I definitely picked up some of my interest from him.

[1995hoo]

I don't believe I picked it up from anyone in my family, grandparents included. My immediate family will make fun of me for the level of detail I can give them, but it's funny how as soon as they want directions or routing advice they ask me. I'm always tempted to say, "What's wrong with the single route you always use? I thought knowing one way to get somewhere was enough."

[J N Winkler]

My Winkler ancestors come originally from Niederfrohna, a small town near Chemnitz (itself called "Karl-Marx-Stadt" in DDR days).  Some years ago I casually Googled to see if there might be any Winkler cousins nearby, and came across this page:

http://www.sekretariatsservice-winkler.de/Autobahnbau.htm

(I don't know for sure that she is related--"Winkler" sounds like an uncommon name but really isn't; in Austria it is the seventh most common surname, and even in Wichita there are unrelated Winklers.)

[formulanone]

My father, while not a person terribly obsessed with numerical/collecting precision, loved driving, cars, and taking the scenic routes. He also liked to avoid crowds and had weak respect for authority...but I think most of these would be traits that wouldn't be genetically passed down, they would be shared or experienced by example. I remember discussions on how to read maps, even/odd numbers and relation to general directions, sharing his photography, or having a greater understanding of a physically larger world around you. And of course, toys that were related to the subject (toy signs, Legos, cars, map puzzles, a globe). My mother was kind of on the other end of the spectrum; other than an interest in education and the fine arts...cars, roads, transportation subjects were usually only a means to an end.

I don't put much stock in most genetically-passed down behaviors, unless there's actual proof in the chromosomes. Sure, there's some traits based on size, dimensions, sex, being human, et cetera...but cultivating a specific interest is usually a develpment of various behaviors and luck - if you're dealing with a really young mind, they usually wander from interest to interest on a daily basis. Children tend to mimic those they respect, trust, and appreciate, but primarily out of their own interests. My daughter and son noticed road signs not long after they'd noticed numbers were all around them, but nothing really stuck. There's still room for change in their short lives, but any generally safe activity which floats their boat is fine with me.

I will say, my daughter takes quick notice when I've deviated from the usual route. I typically explain to her that there's something different to see by going another way. There's a little part of me that thinks I've imparted a bit of an excuse for her to come home late when she's older...

[Alps]

The Aspergers/autism and related sociomental disorders are genetic. Roadgeekery specifically is a learned trait that happens to pair nicely. If my dad weren't bent on traveling and my mom weren't navigating with fistfuls of maps, I wouldn't have gotten into it.

[Laura]

I'd argue that it's epigenetic and responses to environmental exposure.

My father had a great sense of direction - he didn't travel much but knew Baltimore City like the back of his hand. I never saw him get lost driving anywhere unless he went against his better judgement and listened to someone giving incorrect directions.

I discovered my first map at age three and was instantly hooked. I feel like my exposure to maps plus the good sense of direction from my father turned on my love for roads.

[jeffandnicole]

I don't see it as an inhereited trait for me - I never saw either of my parents having any interest in roads. 

I always wanted to take car rides when I was younger.  Many kids groan at the thought of sitting in the car for hours on end, or just a short trip to the nearby stores.  Not me...I was always asking to go.

My brother doesn't have any roadgeeking traits either.

[74/171FAN]

I definitely don't see it as inherited for me. My parents found out though when I remembered the directions to the Peekskill, NY area when I was about 4.  However, the rest of the family except maybe my dad is not very good with directions at all.

Actually, the main reason at times I will go a different way home than I go to work comes from my dad doing that years ago.

[spooky]

If my dad weren't bent on traveling and my mom weren't navigating with fistfuls of maps, I wouldn't have gotten into it.

This.

I have a few factors from both my grandfather and my father that led me to traffic engineering and to roadgeekery. My grandfather was a construction inspector with RIDOT around the time I was born, and would drive around and tell us about roads he worked on. The man also loved (and still loves) to drive around; my brother and I rode all over the state of RI with my grandparents as kids. It made me love exploring and think about where roads go, how they were signed, how they connect, etc.

My parents loaded us in the car as kids and drove us all over the eastern half of the US. These are in the days before smartphones and the internet, so all we had were maps and the ol' trusty AAA Triptik. I expanded by interest in where roads go, how they were signed, etc on a national level. In my teens I joked that I could get from our house in RI to a specific motel in Columbus OH without a map because of the number of trips we made there for car events and the number of times we used Columbus as a way point en route to car events in other locations. My father's interest in cars also lends itself to an interest in roadgeekery.

My brother shares my interest in roads, maps, etc and we share emails today in our 40s chatting about these topics, sharing his experiences in FL and my experiences in New England.

[Henry]

It's sort of a family thing to me. My father would take my brother and me on roadtrips, and now my college-age daughter is getting it from me. Case closed.

[Duke87]

There are no other roadgeeks in my family. I do, however, have an uncle who used to love collecting maps when he was younger. Which is interesting because that's a key way I got started: by being obsessed with maps as a kid.

Of course, I was also fascinated with traffic signals and trains even before I started preschool, so there's more to it.

I also have a cousin who, while not a roadgeek, is into urban planning and urban exploration, which are related subjects that I likewise enjoy. (Although maybe I should let him speak for himself, he is a member here)

[jbnv]

I might have agreed with the arguments for it being a learned trait as opposed to genetic if I didn't see it in my children, who don't live with me and, as far as I know, aren't learning it from their mothers. I suspect that it's ultimately a combination of factors, some of which can be genetic and others which are environmental or learned.

[cpzilliacus]

My Dad is a structural engineer, who only early in his career worked on highway-related engineering projects (he's a Korean War-era veteran). 

But he liked to take back roads a lot (which I did not usually appreciate as a child, though as an adult I have grown to like some back roads), and he never got lost on the streets of the District of Columbia or nearby areas of Maryland and Virginia.

I got interested in highways as a pre-Kindergarten child in highway construction, growing up in a neighborhood near the Circumferential Highway (called the Capital Beltway since it opened completely in 1964).  The segment closest to our home was opened several years before, but almost as soon as it opened, the Maryland State Roads Commission set about widening it from a four lane freeway to six lanes.  I also have vivid memories of massive earth moving efforts that went on along the "roller coaster" section of the freeway where it parallels Rock Creek between Md. 97 (Georgia Avenue, Exit 31) and present-day Md. 185 [193 back then] (Connecticut Avenue, Exit 33).  This work went on well after dark, and it was very impressive to see the massive scrapers and earth movers at work, headlights blazing, preparing a reasonably level roadbed for the new freeway. Not sure how they would have routed the Beltway had Section 4(f) of the U.S. Department of Transportation Act of 1966 been in effect in the years before 1964.

My Dad's stepfather (who I always regarded as a grandfather) was a railroad auditor with the Interstate Commerce Commission, and spent a lot of time driving on government business in the East and as far west as Chicago (he was based in Washington, D.C. but spent a lot of time at main and branch offices of the railroads) in the 1920's and 1930's.  When World War II got going, he was transferred to an office to monitor excess profits of defense contractors (he was too old to be drafted and had served honorably in World War I), and really drove a lot during the war years (because of his government job, he had official exemption from fuel rationing - apparently he and his colleagues drove their own cars and were reimbursed for the miles driven on federal  business).  He was one of the early users of the original Pennsylvania Turnpike, using it to get from Northern Virginia to destinations in cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago - even at the lowered wartime Turnpike speed limits, it was a huge time saver. So he would tell me about his travels to those various cities, which also made me more interested in the highway network, and gave me an appreciation of how bad it was back then (he told me of having to go to a railroad office somewhere in the coalfields of southern West Virginia (might have been the Virginian), where the roads varied between non-existent and terrible, and the challenges of driving same in a rear-wheel-drive sedan of the 1930's).

[Desert Man]

If you grew up in a home with parents who kept maps around and liked having them in handy, then I don't see why not. Might not be "genetic"...more like an inquired taste or interest one was exposed to at home as a child. My Mom worked in the local police or sheriff dept. while my Dad worked as a firefighter and later a local transit bus driver. You have to know your way around with knowledge in roads and geography in such careers, and my own autism I have might have to do with attractions to rather "odd interests", but anyone regardless can have a love affair with roads and geographic subjects.

[AsphaltPlanet]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that roadgeekery is genetic.

Perhaps I am over generalizing, but it seems to me that  nearly everyone who owns a nice car, is at least somewhat of a roadgeek.  Those people may not be "into it" as much as some of the folks here, but I think a good portion of the general population appreciates the road network.

[adventurernumber1]

I don't really think its genetic, but I will say this:

My mom's dad (my grandfather on that side of the family), and his twin brother (my great uncle) were always into maps (road maps included) and geography and into the roads themselves to a degree, but Idk if I'd call them Roadgeeks as hardcore as me. My grandfather had many jobs before his retirement. He was a geography teacher for a very long time, and before that he was actually part of the planning commission or something like that in Rome, GA. He told me about how he was even involved in talk of a limited-access connection from Atlanta to Huntsville to Memphis, and it'd pass through Rome. He's always seemed to be interested in roads to a degree and certainly maps & geography, but once again Idk if I'd call him a hardcore Roadgeek. My great uncle (his twin brother) was also a Geography teacher for a very long time, and he also was interested in roads to at least some degree. In fact, he even made some sort of book about Interstate 40 in Tennessee.

On my dad's side of the family, almost everyone is into driving to at least some degree (except my dad, LOL) but not necessarily roads. My grandfather is the most hardcore in the interest it's appeared. He has a little interest in roads but not too awfully much. He really likes cars and driving around. He also has a very grand sense of direction, never gets lost. Because of all that though we get along very well, and we've gone on a lot of fun drives. I've also taught him some about roads and showed him my atlases and he seemed pretty interested. Both of my uncles (my dad's brother and his sister's husband) like cars and like driving around a lot as well.

However, both of my parents are not even remotely close to being roadgeeks 
My dad despises the idea of driving across the country (while I absolutely love it), and he does not care too awfully much for roads. However, he understands how important roads are to me.
My mom is not a roadgeek at all either, but seems to like roads just slightly more than my dad. She can enjoy a long roadtrip, and would actually be willing to drive across the country if she had to. But she express no interest really in roads.

How did I become a Roadgeek? Well, I don't know, haha. I believe it was just God's will for me. Because I didn't get the most exposure to roads as a kid. However, I've loved roads since the day I was born, and the chances I did get to see the road, even just around town, I loved. My parents also had that Rand McNally atlas for the first decade of my life, and when I found that, I can't tell you how many times I looked at that thing 

[DandyDan]

My dad is something of a railfan, which is similar.  He has, however, always had a large collection of maps.  He has many highway maps, some going back to the 1950's.  Illinois just looks wrong without I-80 on it.  His dad, my grandpa, was the same way.  I don't know if my dad got his maps when he died, though.

My other grandpa, FWIW, had his own massive collection of highway maps and he always loved taking the backroads everywhere.  His preferred route from his house in rural Nobles County, MN to my old house in St. Charles, IL, only followed I-90 from Adrian, MN (straight south on MN 91 from where he lived) to Austin, MN.  He would probably be disappointed the Avenue of the Saints took over part of the route.  He hated the interstates with a passion.

[usends]

I wouldn't have thought that it's genetic, but after my grandfather died, I learned that he too liked to stop the car and take photos of road signs.  That's an example of what I would call "roadgeekery", and it did make me wonder if it somehow got passed down.  Some photos and further thoughts on this page: http://usends.com/Explore/Alton/alton.html

[kurumi]

Maybe.

Way back in the day (I stumbled across this much later, in the newspaper archives), my dad wrote a letter to the editor titled "How to improve highway system." (Headline may have been the paper's choice). Bullet points:
* install advance junction signs at 1/2 mile intervals before major intersections
* develop luminous paint for roadway markings (apparently not available at the time)
* eliminate all left-hand freeway entrances
* improve the secondary road system, instead of trying to have freeways solve all thru- and local-traffic needs

He likes local history, ghost towns, etc. so there's a lot of overlap in our interests; but I wouldn't call him a roadgeek.

[cpzilliacus]

The Aspergers/autism and related sociomental disorders are genetic. Roadgeekery specifically is a learned trait that happens to pair nicely. If my dad weren't bent on traveling and my mom weren't navigating with fistfuls of maps, I wouldn't have gotten into it.

My Dad is a civil engineer that spent his career designing structures of an assortment of things, mostly ocean going vessels, but with some interest in transportation systems, though not as much as me.

[Takumi]

My dad has been a construction inspector my whole life, first for the local department of public works, then with a consulting firm since the late 1990s. When I was very young and he worked for the city, he would bring home city maps whenever a new one would come out, and occasionally he'd take me to his workplace and show me around. I'd see things like the old street blade signs that were replaced en masse in the early 1990s. I think that started my interest in roads.