[OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

[John Smith]

On 2 June 2010 10:23, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> You seem to have missed the rest of my post.  I was arguing that a road with
> no pavement but with a shoulder is *not* unsafe.  OTOH, if the road has no
> shoulder, and traffic traveling at 55 mph, and only 1 car a day, I'm not
> walking down it.

My mother often goes for walks on roads that have 3 or 4 times that
amount of traffic at that speed, and she isn't the only one. It's
perfectly safe to do so because there is room to get off the road and
you can usually hear them coming, especially when it's a B-Double*
instead of a car, I've never heard of any pedestrians being clipped or
killed.

The amount of traffic nor the speed they travel at nor type of traffic
doesn't inherently make walking on a road unsafe.

I have no idea of the legality of walking along roads outside towns,
but hitchhikers do it often and I don't think they get arrested.

However I think it would be a great idea to indicate the difference
between legally disallowed and just not a good idea due to personal
safety, I don't think re-using the foot tag is a good idea, because it
might be legal, but not safe to do late at night because you'll get
mugged etc etc etc.

* http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access:bdouble