A roadgeek is an individual involved in "roadgeeking" or "road enthusiasm"—an interest in roads as a hobby. A person with such an interest is also referred to as a road buff, roadfan or Roads Scholar, the latter
being a play on the term Rhodes Scholar.
Roadgeeking may focus on a single activity related to roads, such as driving the full length of the highway system
in a specific area, creating fonts and other graphic elements to share with other enthusiasts, or researching the numbering
system used for a national highway system. Road enthusiasts may also have a comprehensive interest in a single road, a larger
highway system, or in roads in general, participating in a wide range of hobby activities.
Roadgeek behavior
Behaviors for roadgeeks may include taking road trips for the roads rather than for the destination, sometimes referred to as roadgeeking or Roads Scholaring, or bragging
about the extent of their travels, such as the number of Interstate Highway sections that have wholly traveled. Other activities include the photography of road signs or of various highway sundries, collecting old road maps, maintaining web sites dedicated to highway transport, correcting errors in newspapers and other publications about highway terminology and the
history of highways, and the design of graphics or fonts to facilitate the work of others.
Roadgeeking online
In 2002, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that "road enthusiasm" was an internet phenomenon:
"Road
enthusiasm is a phenomenon that developed with the Internet. People who for years thought they were the only ones who eagerly
awaited the release of the new Rand McNally road atlases each fall suddenly stumbled on to hundreds of people with whom they
could trade pictures, share ideas and debate the finer points of interchange design.
In addition to hundreds of Web sites, there is a newsgroup, misc.transport.road, where the discussion meanders from road-trip
routing and construction projects to quirks and inconsistencies in signage."
