🚗 Road Trips & Famous Roads Trivia Questions & Answers
Route 66, the Nürburgring and the world's great stretches of tarmac. Below are 30 free road trips & famous roads trivia questions with answers — part of Cars trivia on BUZZ. Want a real challenge that adapts to what you know? Play the Cars quiz — no signup needed to start.
30 Road Trips & Famous Roads trivia questions
Q1. Which 1939 Steinbeck novel first gave Route 66 its 'Mother Road' nickname?
Answer: The Grapes of Wrath
💡 Steinbeck devoted an entire chapter of the novel to Dust Bowl families fleeing west on the road.
Q2. How many hairpin bends switchback up Norway's dramatic Trollstigen mountain road?
Answer: 11
💡 King Haakon VII opened the road in 1936 after eight years of construction.
Q3. At Florida's Overseas Highway, US Route 1's mile marker 0 sits in which city?
Answer: Key West
💡 From there the mile markers count upward all the way to Maine, the highway's northern end.
Q4. At 469 miles, the Blue Ridge Parkway holds what title among US National Park sites?
Answer: America's longest linear park
💡 It links Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains along the Appalachian ridge.
Q5. What two-digit number was given to the Chicago-to-Santa Monica highway approved in Nov. 1926?
Answer: 66
💡 It later earned the nickname 'Main Street of America' from the highway association that promoted it.
Q6. California's scenic Highway 1 along the coast is more commonly known to road trippers as what?
Answer: The Pacific Coast Highway
💡 At 656 miles, it's the longest state route in California and one of the most photographed drives on earth.
Q7. In 1933, Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first drive-in of what kind, in Camden, New Jersey?
Answer: A movie theater
💡 He was reportedly inspired by watching his mother struggle to sit comfortably in regular cinema seats.
Q8. What top speed does Germany recommend, without enforcing it, on open Autobahn stretches?
Answer: 130 km/h
💡 Crashing well above that unofficial 'Richtgeschwindigkeit' can still count against a driver legally.
Q9. Which Top Gear host declared Romania's Transfăgărășan 'the best road in the world'?
Answer: Jeremy Clarkson
💡 He said it beat even the Stelvio Pass, which the show had praised on an earlier trip.
Q10. About how many kilometres does Australia's coast-hugging Great Ocean Road stretch?
Answer: 240 km
💡 It took over a decade of mostly hand-dug work to carve it along the cliffs.
Q11. The 1970s outlaw 'Cannonball' cross-country races were named for which speed record driver?
Answer: Erwin 'Cannonball' Baker
💡 Writer Brock Yates organized the actual races partly to protest strict new speed laws.
Q12. Dedicated in 1913, which was the first road built expressly for cars to span the US coast-to-coast?
Answer: Lincoln Highway
💡 Its promoter wanted the whole 3,389-mile route finished by 1915, in time for San Francisco's world's fair — an impossibly ambitious deadline.
Q13. What grim nickname describes Russia's Kolyma Highway, built largely by gulag prisoners in Siberia?
Answer: Road of Bones
💡 Construction ran from 1932 to 1953, with reports of around 25 worker deaths a day during the harshest stretches.
Q14. Roughly how many countries does the Pan-American Highway, the longest driveable road, connect?
Answer: 14
💡 It runs from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina, broken only by the roadless Darién Gap.
Q15. Which businessman founded the group that gave Route 66 its 'Main Street of America' nickname?
Answer: Cyrus Avery
💡 Avery also championed the original Chicago-to-Los Angeles routing that became US 66.
Q16. Germany's first stretch of Autobahn, opened in 1935, connected Frankfurt to which nearby city?
Answer: Darmstadt
💡 That short link kicked off what became the world's first limited-access, high-speed road network.
Q17. What ominous nickname do drivers use for the Nürburgring's brutal 13-mile Nordschleife loop?
Answer: The Green Hell
💡 On public tourist days, anyone with a standard driving license can pay a toll and lap it in their own car.
Q18. What portmanteau word, coined for a 1925 California roadside inn, blended 'motor' and 'hotel'?
Answer: Motel
💡 The original Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo charged just $1.25 a night for a private garage and bathroom.
Q19. About how many miles does Route 66 run between Chicago and Los Angeles?
Answer: 2,448 miles
💡 The Mother Road crossed just eight states, from Illinois all the way to California.
Q20. As of 2018, roughly how many kilometres of Autobahn made up Germany's motorway network?
Answer: 13,000 km
💡 More than half of that entire network still carries no permanent speed limit.
Q21. About how much elevation does a lap of the Nürburgring's Nordschleife climb and drop?
Answer: 300 meters
💡 Some stretches drop so abruptly that fast cars can catch real air over the crests.
Q22. How many numbered hairpin bends climb the Stelvio Pass's steep north face?
Answer: 48
💡 Top Gear once crowned this Alpine pass the greatest driving road on Earth.
Q23. At roughly 7,800 km, what title does Canada's Trans-Canada Highway hold worldwide?
Answer: World's longest national highway
💡 It links Victoria, British Columbia, all the way to St. John's, Newfoundland.
Q24. As of 2024, Baldwin Street — ranked the world's steepest residential street — was in which country?
Answer: New Zealand
💡 In the Dunedin street's dizzying section the road climbs about one metre for every three travelled.
Q25. Which two Italian cities did the world's first true motorway connect in 1924?
Answer: Milan and Varese
💡 Only about 53,000 cars existed in all of Italy when this pioneering toll road opened.
Q26. What 1966 British traffic rule made modern roundabouts flow far better?
Answer: Entering traffic must give way
💡 Traffic engineer Frank Blackmore's research pushed the change through after 1963 trials.
Q27. Whose conquering armies are credited with spreading right-hand driving across Europe?
Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte's
💡 Pre-Revolution French nobility had traveled on the left, forcing peasants to the road's right side.
Q28. Which English inventor patented the reflective road stud known as the cat's eye?
Answer: Percy Shaw
💡 A real cat's eyes glinting in his headlights, after nearby tramlines vanished, sparked the idea.
Q29. Which U.S. state first issued its own manufactured license plates to drivers, back in 1903?
Answer: Massachusetts
💡 New York required registration two years earlier, in 1901, but made owners craft their own plates at first.
Q30. Which Bourbon king's government finished the Amalfi Coast's cliffside road in 1853?
Answer: Ferdinand II
💡 The road was first named the Strada Ferdinandea in his honor before its modern SS163 label.
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