[Tagging] Tagging dangerous intersections

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 3:24 AM, Kieron Thwaites <kieron.thwaites at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I recently passed through an intersection in a particularly dodgy part
> of town that actually had warning signs up, warning motorists that
> said intersection is a hotspot for "smash and grab" robberies.  (If
> anyone is interested, it's on Google Streetview too:
> https://goo.gl/maps/kYkdMR9Kmpk)
>

Not getting into the ethics (I've got a pretty strong moral objection to
navigation for literally avoiding social issues) or legal issues (Microsoft
holds a patent on it) of an "avoid ghetto" feature, one could potentially
work out a traffic_sign=* tag for this feature to indicate the location of
such signs.


> I'd like to add this information to OSM -- certainly, it could be used
> by routing software to avoid the area unless there was no other
> sensible alternative.  However, I'm not sure how best to tag it.  The
> only thing that I've found is the proposed "hazard" tag
> (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/hazard), but as
> it seems to be in a permanent draft state (since 2009), I'm not sure
> if this is the best solution.
>
> Are there better, more current ways of tagging things like these, or
> is the proposed "hazard" tag the best option?
>
> (As an aside: if we go with the "hazard" tag, perhaps some work on
> completing the proposal and getting it approved would be a good idea.
> taginfo shows a few thousand usages to date.)
>

I'd be more inclined to use a hazard=* type tag to indicate locations that
have signs up indicating a tangible and consistent threat, such as might be
the case with intersections marked with a "High Collision Intersection"
sign or "Fatality" sign frequently found in British Columbia or "Dangerous
Intersection" found in Oregon, or the white crosses indicating where people
have died in a traffic accident on Montana's state highways (though in that
case, it might be more appropriate to tag them as roadside crosses instead
or additionally).  Such information could potentially used to alert the
user to the situation as well (for example, Osmand could say something like
"Attention, dangerous intersection" or "Attention, dangerous curve" or
something to that nature).

As an aside, there is already standardized treatments for such situations
in the MUTCD in both the US and Canada that already have tagging available,
such as traffic_calming=rumble_strip, or however one might tag optical
speed bars
<http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2012/08/oregon_traffic_optical_illusio.html>,
which I've seen on several highways in the mountain west on downhill lanes.
Whether or not this actually gets employed by the DOT seems to be a
regional consideration, with notable outliers being BC's nonstandard
signage that speak specifically to the hazard on one end of the spectrum,
and the Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas tendency to be very by the book in using
rumble strips in conjunction with standard signage like "Sharp Curve Ahead"
at the end of a long straightaway, "Signal Ahead", "Stop Ahead" and
"Reduced Speed Ahead" signage at problem locations.
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