On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Richard Welty <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6/3/11 8:51 PM, Anthony wrote: >> >> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Ian Dees<[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Has anyone used OSM for emergency routing with squad cars or ambulances? >> >> Sounds like a really terrible idea. >> >>> Are there any existing tags to specify "emergency-only" roads? >> >> access=no >> > access=emergency is preferable for at least one reason i can > think of: > > if a bridge is closed as unsafe, but hasn't been taken down, > > access=no > > would be the natural way to indicate that.
Right, because access tags don't describe the safety of the road, only the access permissions. > emergency vehicles > shouldn't be overriding this, usually these bridges really and truly > are not usable. Drivers of emergency vehicles shouldn't be using OSM for routing purposes. And people who don't know the area where they are driving shouldn't be driving emergency vehicles. Certainly not people who don't even know what bridges are safe to drive on! I don't know how it in other jurisdictions, but no one was allowed to drive the ambulance or fire truck where I volunteered until they filled out a blank map with all the street names. What if a bridge is safe for a car, but not for a truck? What if it's safe for a truck, but not for rush hour traffic? What if a road is safe for any vehicles but is too bumpy for an ambulance? Or what if it's too bumpy for an ambulance, but will do if there's absolutely no other route? There are far too many possibilities to try to do this in an automated fashion. Drivers of emergency vehicles need to know the places where they drive better than the mapping software. There's no safe way around this. Maybe, when OSM is much more advanced than it already is, data from it can be used in an *interactive* mode to *suggest* routes to meet strange scenarios (how do I get from A to B when the bridge from A to B just collapsed). But ignoring all access=no tags probably wouldn't be a good idea then. I sure hope this person on reddit has talked to his supervisor about his plan to use a Garmin to help them get to their destination. And I sure hope he doesn't work where I live. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
