i looked at some 3d models of the real life city i live in and its various roadways and highways and it cemented in my head the idea that Cities: Skylines needs narrower roads, and highway merges/splits at less obtuse angles
real life highways merge in long stretches where the small road slowly matches the angle of the big road then seamlessly merges into it; but cities skylines always treats it like a regular junction, and doesn't let the roads get close enough to each other to truly merge
and i haven't seen a mod that fixes the underlying scale issue that bothers me so much. i suspect it might be difficult to change something so deep down within the core of the game without changing that actual source code
i don't REALLY want to play cities skylines, i want professional traffic simulation software but as a game
and sure there's mods that will let me manually move every piece of road with pinpoint precision, but if i make it look even close to realistic then it comes out all cursed and causes rendering issues and weird bugs with the driving simulation