[OSM-talk] Motorways and Motorway_link

[Philip Homburg]

In your letter dated Sat, 4 Oct 2008 23:41:03 +0100 you wrote:
>2008/10/4 Philip Homburg <pch-osm-talk at u-1.phicoh.com>:
>
>> That strikes me as a bad idea. If you use that kind of tagging with a
>> device that displays the current speed limit in effect than you get the
>> very confusing situation that the actual situation differs from the map *by
>> design*.
>
>On the contrary. I map the facts. Occasionally, signage diverges from
>those facts.
>
>Sure, but in Ireland (and UK) the correct placement of the motorway
>sign is the point of divergence of the standard road network. So where
>you have two on-the-ground facts at odds with each other like this,
>you need to make a judgement, as you do, for instance, when the street
>name signs at either end of the street differ in spelling.

I don't know about Ireland and the UK, but in .nl the actual position of the
sign is what counts. Not what any government body intends to do.

So in .nl, if I would act according to what you propose (i.e. speed up to
motor way speeds at the point of divergence of the standard road network) then
I might lose my drivers licence (that the would be driving 120 km/h on a
50 km/h road, in which case you can immediately hand your licence over to
the police).

But then again, if the Irish law says that the sign has to be be placed at
the point of divergence of the standard road network, and you can get away
with that argument in a court of law, then it may make sense to tag the roads
accordingly.

In that case, we would just have to have different conventions for tagging in
different countries.