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March 19

Down the road

Here's an unlikely scenario: Let's say a woman named Alice is 9 months pregnant and is in a car on the right side of Canusa Street with her husband, Bob. Suddenly, Alice is about to have birth, so Bob quickly rushes to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, Bob panics and swerves the car left, and exactly halfway between the road, their baby is born. All of the passengers survive.

With that said, is the baby American, Canadian, neither, or both? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 05:46, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The yellow line down the middle seems to be about 3 or 4 inches wide. A car is a lot wider than that, so any car that is "on" the centre line must have some part of it on one side, and some part on the other. But that's just the car. What is the location of the humans inside? It's possible that all of them could be on one side of the line, if, say, Alice was sitting in the back seat behind Bob. Without further information it would be impossible to tell. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Babies tend not to be born in an instant, and even if they were there would be more pressing concerns than its nationality. See Birth aboard aircraft and ships for similar scenarios. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:44, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's uncertainty about the exact position and the officials only have the parents' word stating it was either this side or that. The most likely outcome is that the parents can choose, and would normally choose the side giving least bureaucracy; pragmatic officials wouldn't mind. If the parents are Usan or Canadian, they will normally pick their own side. If there are formal border checks (apparently the case today), those may be relevant too.

Such streets with a border running down the middle or along the edge of the street, with houses on both sides, are pretty common in Europe; I count around 30 towns with such streets in Belgium alone. European countries however tend to run on jus sanguinis principles and have mostly open borders, avoiding the issue. This makes Canusa Street's claim on the friendliest border in the world questionable. It must be the typical American hyperbole. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:44, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Line house [1]. 2A00:23C7:E197:1C01:D411:6500:B0F3:68E2 (talk) 14:34, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How can a border street be "in Belgium alone"? —Tamfang (talk) 04:57, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Belgium and The Netherlands contain a number of enclaves of each other, some of which have further enclaves within them; see Baarle. Thus some of these Belgium–Netherlands borders are, overall, within Belgium. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.64.108 (talk) 08:38, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]