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Ef996yesterday at 4:57 PM0 repliesview on HN

Author here. Engineers use clothoids as the primary geometry for high-speed roads by offsetting a centerline clothoid. However, the offset of a clothoid is not itself a clothoid, so the left and right edges are not mathematically clothoids.

A clothoid is simply a mathematically ideal way to achieve continuously increasing curvature along a path. In practice, it can be approximated by chaining multiple circular arcs with decreasing radii.