[Tagging] tagging the diameter of a mini-roundabout

[Philip Barnes]

On Sun, 2023-01-29 at 14:31 +0100, Florian Lohoff wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:12:06AM +0000, Philip Barnes wrote:
> > 
> > When I first encountered Canadian four way stops in 1980, I did
> > think these should be mini-roundabouts. 
> 
> Thats the main point. In Germany we have a solution of "last resort"
> which is called "Rechts vor links" - So when there is no other 
> rules of priority its "Right before left".

That is a rule I believe exists in most of continental Europe. I
certainly learned of it as ‘Priorité à droite’ in French lessons at
school.


> 
> Other jurisdications dont have this so there is a problem with
> producing
> junctions with "equal priority". The UK solution is the "mini
> roundabout".
> 
> So a mini roundabout is really "mini" or "tiny" - Not necessarily
> round.
A roundabout isn't necessarily round either :)

It about going around, the name comes from the fairground roundabout
(carousel in American English) or a children's roundabout in
playground.

A mini-roundabout in the UK, and in France which is the country which
comes second in terms of my driving experience are signed with a blue
sign with white arrows. Different to a normal roundabout. They are
always traversable but doing so is often made uncomfortable for small
vehicles by either building them up with concrete so they can be the
height of a speed bump or with the use of setts.

Others are just white paint at what was once a give way and nobody goes
around the paint. They just make priority equal.
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=381114187015295


I did spot this one today,
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=509797140032524 which is
traversable by a truck, but you wouldn't want to in a car.


> The problem here starts with the imagery in the Wiki which IMHO dont
> show mini roundabouts, but random roundabouts with traversable
> center.
Am not sure what you mean, all of the photos that say mini-roundabout,
I would interpret as such. The one that looks different is
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/5/5e/Kreisverkehr.jpg but it
has the mini-roundabout sign so I would treat it a a mini-roundabout. A
large vehicle turning would have to cross the island. In reality most
drivers would go straight over it.
> 
> And main distinction people read in the wiki is "traversable center"
> so
> everything with a traversable center gets tagged by mappers as mini
> roundabout.
> 
I don't think I have ever come across a roundabout with a traversable
centre, why would it even exist?

> So we have a problem with the wiki documentation. 
It looks fine to me, although mini-roundabouts were common in the UK by
the time I was learning to drive in the late 70s.

Phil (trigpoint)