Viatology…

What is viatology? It’s nothing, really. Nothing at all. It’s just a made-up term to describe the hobbying interest that some people have regarding roads and various subjects relating to vehicle transportation, including construction, design, signs, traffic signals, route numbering systems, bridges, highway history, road map collecting and many other facets too numerous to mention.

The term “viatology” was made up by Carl Rogers, a general pest who posts to the misc.transport.road Usenet newsgroup. Whereas most people with a hobbyist’s interest in roads call themselves roadgeeks or Roads Scholars or other such terms, Rogers insists on calling them “viatologists” and sometimes “transportologists.”

No one accepts his made-up terminology, which frustrates him tremendously, so he keeps spamming M.T.R. with increasingly-frantic attempts to force compliance with his verbiage. He’s fighting a losing battle. He is almost universally disrespected, if not outright hated, among the roadgeek community, and his terms are laughed at, scoffed at or ignored. He’s even taken to insisting that viatology, the study of roads, will one day be considered a science. Most don’t know if he really believes the nonsense he posts, or if he’s just doing it to be an arrogant asshole.

Poor Carl. His Web site is panned and ridiculed, and his attempt to contribute to the English language is rejected. It must really suck to be him.