As a long-time OSMer, I offer perspective on two "dangerous areas" near me, one past, one present.
On my university campus (University of California) there WAS an area in a meadow which was grazed by cattle (both from the original landuse from a century ago and presently, as these meadows are grazed by cattle even today, at a university of tens of thousands of students). A decade and longer ago, there was a swale (low-lying area) which I believe was human-converted into a sort of reservoir for watering cattle, but it had steep sides, was quite deep and could be impossible for humans or cattle to escape if they fell into it, especially when empty / dry. Not by me, but this was marked on OSM as a "no go area," which I always found curious, as that wasn't an explicitly defined tag. I'm nearly certain that today, this dangerous area has been "remedied" (filled in with dirt) and no longer exists as a hazard on campus. In OSM, there is no longer anything (node, way) in the area to tag as such; it has effectively disappeared from both the real world and our map. Also near me is a "beach" (it sort of is, sort of isn't) which is a dangerous place to ocean-swim, it is known locally as the "Toilet Bowl" as it has nasty churning surf and undertow currents which I believe have drowned at least one person. When I heard local news that such a drowning occurred yet again, I endeavored to tag a node there with name=Toilet Bowl (dangerous area, no swimming) + swimming=no + hazard=yes. (Yes, I know that violates "name is name only"). Also, there isn't a "physical" tag (like natural=beach, as that is unusual, though not wholly wrong, on a node). Yet I couldn't help but feel that hazard=yes, a "draft / underway proposal" (since 2007?! really?) is insufficient: the value "yes" isn't documented in the proposal, and others listed there, like chasm, radiation, rock_slide, minefield, playing_children... didn't fit a dangerous swimming area. Plus, the hazard tag doesn't render (a triangle with exclamation point might be a good starting icon). I believe OSM needs better, explicit tagging to identify dangerous, hazardous areas, and Carto should render these. There are many different kinds of these, from those I just noted, to "high-crime area" and what others might consider sensitive or political. (We shouldn't be afraid to say that an explicit hazard exists if one does). A proposal that seems to have gotten stuck for 12 years seems it's a good starting point, can it be resurrected? OSM mapping these would be another welcome feature in our map, as I know of no other general-purpose map (that IS how many use OSM) which identifies these sorts of "everyday" hazards. Think about it: a hazardous situation might find YOU one day, and you might be very glad you saw this on a map beforehand so you could avoid it. SteveA California _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
