[OSM-talk] Numbers and i18n

[Simon Hewison]

Dean Earley wrote:

>> motorway != autobahn != freeway
>>
>> For some purposes they can be treated in the same way, but for many 
>> purposes they are different.
> 
> Can you expand on this?
> I'd have thought that it would be a "fast road between major locations", 
> just varying in speed per country.

.. with special regulations about the type of traffic allowed on it.
Almost always, motorways are two separated carriageways, and you can only 
drive down each carriageway in one direction.
Almost always, motorways forbid pedestrians, cyclists and horse-drawn vehicles

The Wikipedia description of a motorway is reasonably good
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorway

There will always be some national differences between road regulations, 
specifically, the autobahns in Germany with no speed restrictions vs 
incredibly slow speed limits parts of the M4 going into London, but for 
drawing a map, and route planning applications, defining autobahn the same 
as motorway is sufficient. Any exceptions to the general rule can be defined 
by specifying the variation in a tag on the road in question.

-- 
Simon Hewison