Intersections of Sidewalks and Driveways

Minh_Nguyen · February 21, 2025, 9:12am

An identical law applies throughout California, but over here we haven’t been creating these theoretical crossings as a rule:

Minh_Nguyen:

In San José, as we systematically imported sidewalks as ways, we
simultaneously identified and mapped crosswalks to connect the sidewalks
to the routable road network. We mapped many unmarked crosswalks
throughout the city, especially in residential neighborhoods. However,
we consciously omitted unmarked crossings across collector and arterial
streets. For example, in the T-intersection at [3][4], we mapped an
unmarked crosswalk across the side street (Edwards Avenue) but not
across the main street (South 1st Street), even though both crossings
are legal apart from laws on due diligence or negligence.

Our reasoning was that renderers and routers need to reliably
distinguish between the unmarked crosswalks that are commonly thought of
as crosswalks (like the one across Edwards) and those that are more or
less a loophole in the law (across South 1st). A less capable pedestrian
would be ill-advised to cross South 1st here compared to the safer,
marked crosswalk just a block or two away. Conversely, a capable,
desperate enough pedestrian would cross the street anywhere it’s safe to
do so, regardless of the router’s suggestion. (They might even cross
halfway down the block – which would also be legal in this case.)
Additionally, if we had mapped all the legal crossings, Osmand would’ve
annoyed drivers with excessive warnings about theoretical crosswalks,
making the warning less effective at real ones.

Though I’m casting the rationale in relative terms, it isn’t really a
subjective decision. As locals, we intuitively knew not to map unmarked
crosswalks across a road that mostly had signalized intersections,
because that happens to be a reliable heuristic for an unsafe crosswalk
in this city. Other heuristics like lane count and speed limit would’ve
been unreliable here but might be reliable in a nearby suburb.

It’s one thing to map a crossing aggressively in a quiet residential neighborhood but quite another to map one in a business district where there’s usually a good reason for the lack of any crossing accommodations. I’m not against mapping something so that one of these theoretical crossings doesn’t get confused with a crossing=no situation (due to signs or sheer impassability), but it should be something other than a highway=crossing or footway=crossing that needs to get canceled out by a variety of secondary tags.