[Talk-GB] Tagging convention for unpassable roads
Andy Townsend
ajt1047 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 2 09:03:55 UTC 2021
On 02/07/2021 09:26, Edward Bainton wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A note near me is from Amazon Logistics:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2674954
> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2674954>
>
> The road is unpassable for vehicles except 4x4, but legally has no
> restrictions.
>
> User mundlk has tagged it "motorcar=no". I've suggested that should be
> reverted and instead describe the road with other tags.
>
> Am I right? can anyone clarify the doctrine in these cases?
>
Yes. "motorcar" is an access tag that that describes the legal right of
access, not the practicality of that access. Various tags exist
(tracktype, smoothness, hazard tags etc.) to help a user of a particular
vehicle decide whether it is appropriate for them.
That Amazon user has been very reactive to changeset comments (see
http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=10205154 )
but unfortunately this user does seem to keep making the same mistakes
over and over again - they appear to use motorcar=yes to mean "a
delivery driver (ab)used by Amazon could access ..." and motorcar=no to
mean "... could not access ...".
The benefit of Amazon's armchair** mapping to OSM in the UK is that many
service roads and farm tracks that were previously unmapped do actually
get mapped; the disadvantage is that they get mapped with extremely
incomplete information. However, they have added a note prompting you
to investigate their change (and me, elsewhere, at
https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2672130 ), so arguably that's "OSM
working as intended".
As I understand it, Amazon's "somewhat rigid" working practices don't
allow for the collection of more data in situ (and worse*) so we're a
bit stuck.
Best Regards,
Andy
* see https://www.channel4.com/news/anger-at-amazon-working-conditions et al
** I suspect that this somewhat overstates the comfort of this
employee's seating arrangements.
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