On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Nic Roets <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Nathan Edgars II <[email protected]> wrote: >> As others have said, foot=no when pedestrians are legally allowed is a >> bad idea. As long as you walk against traffic, drivers will usually >> see you, and you can easily see and get out of the way of any vehicles >> unless the paved area extends all the way to the edge of the >> right-of-way. The idea that one should not walk on certain roadways >> where walking is legal, simply because certain drivers can't drive, is >> ridiculous, and leads to legal restrictions that prohibit reasonable > > Nathan, the problem is providing good routing instructions to average > people. If we can't provide that we will loose people to Google Map > Maker, Waze, Tom Tom etc.
Then we'll lose them. If they want incorrect tagging, we don't have to cater to them. > > There are many reasons why a routing engine should not follow the > legal definition of right of way: > 1. Safety (as discussed here). > 2. Permissive. Fortunately a tag was defined for it long ago. > 3. An illegal barrier (gate or fence) has been erected. And you may > think that this strange, but it happens frequently in South Africa. In > fact, it has happened that the municipality wanted to remove one of > them and the residents association obtained an injunction against the > municipality on the basis that removing it will cause the crime rate > to return to unacceptable levels. So sometimes it is not even possible > to determine the legal status of a right of way. > 4. Driving on some tracks it will cause unnecessary environmental > damage, like erosion. Sometimes such an opinion is debatable, but > there are cases where a clear majority of local residents feel the > same way. Usually the authorities will signpost it (effectively > removing the right of way), but that may not always be the case. > 5. Other things that we can't forsee right now. > We're not talking about cases where the public may have a theoretical right to use a way, but it's de facto private. We're talking about the case of a high-traffic road where pedestrians are allowed, despite the wishes of bad drivers. > When I map, I just want to create a useful map. And when I write > software it should be backward compatible with old data and forward > compatible with new data and still give reasonable results. I don't > want to waste time on finding the legal status of everything. > Usually legal status, or at least de facto status, is simple: is there a sign prohibiting pedestrians? Otherwise you're making people who want to walk somewhere that's only accessible by a "dangerous" road waste time finding if it's legal to do so. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
