If I have your okay, I would like to post a thread in the Arizona forum with a link to this thread to attempt more involvement.
As to the posts of future articles, keep them coming and I will do some research also, those are what give the basis to the importance of this thread.

I will offer this link:
http://www.ranker.com/list/9-car-accide ... ash?page=1
#4 seems to jump out as an issue that could have been prevented with proper elevation settings.
My thoughts are this thread leads to an understanding for editors to take the editing responsibility seriously by knowing that there are folks out there who simply follow the routing commands, even when they make no sense, and though fault can be placed on the driver, it is important for us editing to give good routing solutions as the waze app promotes.

I don't have an article, but rather an anecdote...

I was driving up to Philadelphia from New Orleans. On I-81 in western Virginia I came across a total closure of the Interstate in a rural area, probably somewhere near Harrisonburg... I waited for a good 45 minutes before taking the emergency turnaround and trying US 11, which runs parallel to 81 in the area.

Of course, traffic was quite bad going that way as well, so I tried an even more drastic measure, knowing if I went eastward long enough along mountain roads I could get to I-95, which runs north from Richmond to DC and beyond. So I looked on my TomTom and planned myself a route. All was well, for a good half hour or so of the fun kind of white-knuckle driving in the Prius, until I came to see a huge tow truck with its driver waving me away, like "go back, go back!"

I kept going anyway, passing a sign with a picture of a hairpin turn and the text "5 MPH", only to see another huge tow truck and, then, an 18-wheeler jackknifed around that hairpin turn! Yikes.

That was it, I turned around and headed back to 81 and waited another half hour or so before traffic started moving. If it wasn't for that truck taking that route — I can't imagine it was because of anything besides a GPS — I would have probably made it through to the other side. Oh well!

n8nagel wrote:I'd really like to see a way to discriminate between garden variety unpaved roads and roads that are really trails. "Dirt Road/4x4 Trail" doesn't really tell you much; there's roads in my area (VA) that are gravel but other than that they're perfectly fine roads. I'd set Waze to avoid them if I'm driving my car, but if I'm in the Jeep... I'd like to know the difference between something that is a non-issue and something that actually qualifies as challenging terrain.

I believe that this has been mentioned before, but nothing has really come of it...

Yeah, a similar distinction would be nice depending on whether I flew or drove to my gf's small hometown in Michigan (that is, whether I was in my car or just a rental! ). Not that there are any challenging mountain roads in southeast Michigan...

Hi everyone... I was prompted to read this thread because I am working on Wiki articles with related threads on Forest Service Roads and Indian Reservation Roads.

After reading the few articles mentioned here, I thin it is a worthy discussion but I've really seen no objective evidence that this is critical. I also have not seen suggested approaches to deal with the perceived threat, which is probably OK since I have not seen a real threat.

One article talked about a woman, could have been anyone, changing her mind in traffic after she already committed to an alternative action. That's her fault, not the GPS. The other articles were about Semi Trailers. They have a special responsibility to deal with their larger vehicle, yet so many of them plow into overpasses that are too low. They need to know some roads are marked for them not to use because they weigh too much. They should know not to go down a hairpin turn route too. That's just negligence if they mess up like what is in the article.

We have no real tools to differentiate if a road can be traversed by cars but not trucks due to their length. I would venture an offer that Waze programmers could easily add a feature in the client that would designate what kind of vehicle you were using (Semi, car, 4x4 car/truck, ATV, motorcycle, and any number of factors). Then, without any changes to the map, they could give some instruction. For instance, if roads had too tight of turns, they would ward off Semi Trailers so they didn't get stuck. That would require no action by the editor population and would be a much better solution. If you entered in the height of your Semi's load and weight, Waze could warn about height and weight restrictions (if it had the data).

The only place I see this thread intersecting the USFS or Indian Reservation road topics is that in rural areas, well maintained dirt roads should be marked as streets, not dirt road 4x4 trails. They are used as streets. Even so, who knows if their maintenance will deteriorate or if there is a seasonal variation in that road that is significant. Yea, you could add a seasonal closure. It all goes back to the driver deciding to not turn down a road or turn around if the road is not quite what they want to travel.

Does anyone have a real, actionable GPS issue that could be solved by how we edit the map?

n8nagel wrote:I'd really like to see a way to discriminate between garden variety unpaved roads and roads that are really trails. ....

Good point, but can we do it with the tools we have in the editor? It would seem not from a "complete" standpoint. It's a balance between too restrictive or too permissive. Marking anything not paved as a 4x4 road would deny access to such roads. That would be particularly bad where such roads are critical (rural, sw areas). Marking everything streets would at least inconvenience someone in giving them the wrong route -- and we'd have to assume they'd not travel down the road once they noticed it was too rough. I guess that points to regional discretion of the editors to understand where to make the decision. One rule does not fit all.

If you take a look at the USFS maintenance classification page at https://www.waze.com/wiki/Forest_Service_Roads, there is a set of pictures that give different levels of a dirt road maintenance. For USFS roads, I suggest a mapping to Waze road types. I know many non-paved roads are not USFS, but this shows that someone is thinking about how to classify what kinds of vehicles can travel over different types of unpaved roads.

While working on public and Indian Reservation roads wiki pages, I found this item that was relevant to this discussion. It was on a National Park Service page about Death Valley. It shows that increasingly more people are using their GPS devices to go to parks... Of course, Death Valley is not in the center of civilization:

http://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/directions.htm

Using GPS Navigation
GPS Navigation to sites to remote locations like Death Valley are notoriously unreliable. Numerous travelers have been directed to the wrong location or even dead-end or closed roads. Travelers should always carry up-to-date road maps to check the accuracy of GPS directions.
DO NOT DEPEND ONLY ON YOUR VEHICLE GPS NAVIGATION SYSTEM.

There is no specific street address for the park or the Furnace Creek Visitor Center. Many GPS users have had success using the street address for the Death Valley Post Office which is located about 400 meters south of the visitor center.
The post office address is:
328 Greenland Blvd.
Death Valley, CA 92328

Map coordinates for the visitor center are:
N 36°27.70
W 116°52.00