[OSM-talk] Traffic, Safety, Danger, Oh My!
Paul Houle
paul at ontology2.com
Tue Jun 22 15:30:04 BST 2010
As a response to a proposal to add perceived safety information to
OSM (which may or may not be accurate) I was thinking last night about
what kind of safety information would be useful and correct.
The county I'm in has a GIS system in which they put "red dots" for
every accident that is reported to the police. I also see monitoring
devices on the (rural) roads near me all of the time, so unless
somebody is doing a master's thesis on my neighborhood, extensive
traffic data is available for both the major and minor streets.
Periodically the Ithaca Journal runs an article on "The Most
Dangerous Roads In Tompkins County", derived from actual accident
data. Of course, each of these roads has a story about why it is
dangerous, and that's particularly useful to travelers. For instance,
a rpad near me is on an exposed hilltop (gets covered with snowdrifts in
the winter) and has a 90 degree turn. There's also a plateau just north
of Cornell that has several roads that go up a steep incline. Some of
these have hairpin turns that often accumulate multiple stuck and
crashed cars during winter storms... And if you think that's bad, try
the one that goes straight up the hill and seems to get several tractor
trailers stuck in it every year [despite the sign that tells trucks not
to enter]
Generally it seems that traffic engineers in Upstate NY like
building unusual intersections -- I can think of many interstate
intersections around Albany and Binghamton that baffled me the first
time I saw them, and there's a particular approach to Ithaca in which
traffic on the left is supposed to yield to traffic on the right. All
of these intersections "make sense" when you look at the big picture of
traffic flow, but many people get confused when they see them
infrequently, and sometimes they do the wrong things.
It seems to me that it would be useful to mark particular hazards
and give people enough information that they can understand the
curveballs along routes.
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