If you take a look at taginfo, you will see that in most countries (except RO and RU) it is common to use maxspeed:type for context codes (like DE:urban, AT:zone30) and maxspeed only for numeric values. I would suggest changing the table in wiki page Key:maxspeed - OpenStreetMap Wiki in this way.
instead maxspeed or source:maxspeed in the table header → maxspeed:type or source:maxspeed
And instead:
it is more common and appropriate to provide a numeric value for maxspeed=* than to use the Context Specific Values (Default Limits) of source:maxspeed
→
it is more common and appropriate to provide a numeric value for maxspeed=* than to use the Context Specific Values (Default Limits) of maxspeed:type or source:maxspeed
Maxspeed type is often used in areas without posted speed limits. Those codes refer to legal designation which includes a sppeed limit. Routers will have a lookup table containing relevant designations and thier speed limits. This allows the router to determine a route using the most update information for those regions.
That’s not really an issue. If source:maxspeed or maxspeed:type is given, the explicit values can be updated just as easily. It’s especially pointed out, that
Nevertheless the table under “Implicit maxspeed values” shows what’s implied if you still use it. Maybe maxspeed=* shouldn’t be the first option here and instead the header could be changed to:
source:maxspeed=* or
maxspeed:type=* or
(maxspeed=*)
source:maxspeed=* or maxspeed:type=* or (maxspeed=*)
the basic idea of source:maxspeed was to add an explicit maxspeed plus a way to record whether it is implicit or signposted, e.g. to cater for situations where the otherwise implicit limit is signposted.
Key:maxspeed:type - OpenStreetMap Wiki
The wiki says it is only used some regions such UK in other regions source:maxspeed is used
but there are a lot of examples. You should give also an maxspeed value
Note that there is also zone:maxspeed and zone:traffic which partly overlaps with that. The table header would become a bit big, I think.
Also, note that the use of that table is rather… limited, if not useless. To be honest, I think it should be deleted (see below):
First of all, it contains no additional information over what is already on the https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Default_speed_limits page in a more useful form. Then, it only contains information about very few countries. It also does not have any links to sources of the information presented there, so it is more difficult to verify if the information is actually correct.
But most importantly, if the purpose of that table is to supply data consumers (such as router applications) an easy mapping to infer a concrete maxspeed from a source:maxspeed (etc.) value, then this fails. It doesn’t work, it isn’t so easy. For the reason(s) why, see my talk (minute 6:43 onwards) from the last SotM:
yes, but this is not what this table deals with. zone:maxspeed is only for zones and has a different syntax of the values (the zones are explained later). And zone:taffic is not directly about maxspeed,. You may combine maxspeed=50 source:maxspeed=sign zone:traffic=DE:rural.
Regarding the table, we should avoid redundancies and rather set a clearly visible link