Did you know that the US has the longest road network of any country? About one-tenth of all roads on Earth are in the United States—even though it is only the fourth largest county in the world. This is one of many fun facts in the latest comparison video from MetaBallStudios. Even if you’ve never wondered what it would look like if we combined every road and rolled it up, seeing it will blow your mind. The four minute video literally puts the world in perspective.
Many of the shorter road networks are in island nations. And many of the top 10 correspond to the largest countries too. The video also includes density, how long the road system is compared to the area of each country. From less than 1 kilometer of road per 100 square kilometers of land (Mauritania, in western Africa) to 1,427 (Macau, an autonomous region of China), it’s a wide range. Russia and Japan have road networks of similar length, but Russia is about 45 times larger!
The video is set on a model of New York City so the scale of buildings, plane altitudes, and even clouds give context for the smaller rolls. But the scale quickly escalates. The world has nearly 40 million miles of roads. The diameter of all them rolled up is 128km, or 80 miles, which puts it into outer space. The data comes from Wikipedia and includes both paved and unpaved roads.
MetalBallStudios has an amazing variety of comparison videos. Some are reality-based like the deepest underground structures or tallest statues and buildings. But there’s also great science fiction comparisons like the size of starships, dragons, and sea creatures from SpongeBob to Godzilla. If you’re looking to gain perspective on nearly anything, the MetaBallStudios YouTube channel has already done the research and made it super compelling.
