It turns out it does make sense

I work in an industrial part that only has one access point. Everyone enters and leaves by the same street.

However, lately I've noticed people going down what on a map is a dead end street (in red on the left). Where are they going?

Today I went down that dead end street. It turns out that it's only a dead end in theory - in practice you can get into the parking lot of one of the strip malls along the main road.