[OSM-talk] Another argument for Open Street Data ?

[Patrick Weber]

D Tucny wrote:

> On 12/11/2007, *Patrick Weber* <p.weber at ucl.ac.uk 
> <mailto:p.weber at ucl.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Maybe with OSM data this would have been fixed long ago? I wonder
>     how it
>     takes for changes in TeleAtlas/Navteq Data to travel down to the
>     end user ?
>
>     Village crashes blamed on sat nav
>     * Villagers in Carmarthenshire say they fear restoration work is
>     being
>     damaged by drivers using satellite navigation. *
>     "There has been a tremendous increase in traffic and there's no reason
>     for it to come over the Black Mountain unless they have been directed
>     that way," he said.
>
>     "I think the thing is to stop them coming over the mountain by telling
>     them not to use the route from a sat-nav point of view."
>
>
> What I noticed in that story, different to other 'satnav ruined my 
> life' type stories, is that there is no claim that anyone is doing 
> anything wrong... No mention of signs being ignored because the satnav 
> told them to... no mention of people doing overtly stupid things 
> (well, except for hitting buildings trying to get big trucks through 
> gaps that are too small)... So, through deduction, it would seem that 
> there is a valid, shorter route through these villages, it may not be 
> suitable for wide/long/heavy vehicles, but, it's not been signposted 
> as such and the councils responsible for such signage are blaming 
> satnav for people choosing a shorter route that they haven't bothered 
> to sign as being unsuitable... You can't blame the lorry drivers for 
> getting stuck if there was no signage to tell them they'd be unable to 
> pass, you can't blame the satnav for not pointing out problems that 
> the councils haven't pointed out themselves, so the blame again solely 
> lands on the councils... Of course, if there really is sufficient 
> signage that's being ignored, then it's entirely driver stupidity, 
> again, and I apologise to the councils...
>
It is not very clear from the story, but I think what happens here is 
SatNav is giving drivers who previously didnt have any local knowledge 
of short cuts, and who would have previously stuck to the main road, are 
now lurred in a false sense of empowerement. The satnav gives them a 
false sense of having a local knowledge and confidence to take a 
potential shortcut, but they get stuck then when it turns out there is a 
reason why this isnt a main road!
Before sat nav, there wouldnt have been a problem (and no apparent need 
for signage to warn road users) because anyone not local would have 
stuck to the main road, and locals would have had local knowledge to 
evaluate which route is possible.

> This isn't going to be something we can really easily fix either, OK, 
> we could record the road widths everywhere that way software using OSM 
> data could do some clever stuff to work out if the user's vehicle can 
> fit through if they input the width, height, length and turning 
> capabilities of their vehicle... But... that would be a hell of a lot 
> of effort when any limits should be signposted, we can (reasonable) 
> easily add those to the data and any software using the data can pass 
> this info on to the users by whatever means it offers, such as the 
> requesting the user to input their vehicle dimensions if they choose 
> the 'By lorry' routing option...

I still believe that the open structure of OSM can better accomodate a 
much richer data model to support issues such as this. It is long term, 
but once OSM has reached completeness for example in the UK, the 
continous enrichment of data with such qualititative data will become 
possible and a user input focus.