Talk:Default speed limits/Archive 1

Potential duplication

It seems that such table is already present in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Speed_limits#Country_code.2Fcategory_conversion_table Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I have seen that table, but it has no sources, which is bad, and only supplies the speed limit for cars, not for anything else. Additionally, it is not machine readable (because it contains prose) while this page here includes tags that (see warning at the top of the page) have not been agreed upon yet but just show what would be necessary to have a machine-readable translation table. So this is why I started a new one, with the goal of course, to eventually replace the one you linked with a link to this page --Westnordost (talk) 18:49, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Resolved: answered

maxspeed:coach is suspect in Poland

The law has such raise maxspeed limit, but it is defined as "bus that fulfill obligation defined in Art. 66. point 5" that it turn has "Minister właściwy do spraw transportu w porozumieniu z ministrami właściwym do spraw wewnętrznych oraz Obrony Narodowej określi, w drodze rozporządzenia, warunki techniczne pojazdów oraz zakres ich niezbędnego wyposażenia." (so that it will be defined in a separate regulation). That regulation is called "rozporządzenie Ministra Infrastruktury w sprawie warunków technicznych pojazdów oraz zakresu ich niezbędnego wyposażenia".

I am not sure whatever maxspeed:coach is the best way to record it - from what I see any bus may be certified, and I expect that any long-range bus will be Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:37, 18 June 2018 (UTC) In general it seems that, "maxspeed:bus" is de facto 100 and 80 limit applies only to old busses Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

My experience from reading the various legislations is that almost every code of laws (in the EU) contains wording similar to the Polish one. What is usually meant and sometimes clearly written is that buses that conform to the EU Class B and Class III standards are granted this "special permission" to drive 100, which not by chance coincides with our definition of coach=*. FYI, the definitions are:

Vehicles exceeding 22 passengers:

• Class I: vehicles with seated places and standing areas to allow frequent passenger movement (urban buses)
• Class II: vehicles principally designed for carriage of seated passengers with some standing areas (interurban buses)
• Class III: vehicles with only seated places (coaches)

Vehicles up to 22 passengers:

• Class A: vehicles with seated places and standing areas
• Class B: vehicles only with seated places

Source: Requirements for buses and coaches based on EU legislation

Now, it may very well be that "almost every bus", as you say, e.g. also Class I buses are allowed to drive 100 km/h. Just wanted to inform you about the definitions in the EU here in case you stumble upon the mention of these classes --Westnordost (talk) 20:12, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Curiously, in "Warunki dodatkowe dla autobusu o dopuszczalnej prędkości do 100 km/h" and related I see nothing that makes "only seating places" mandatory. I would expect it so maybe it is defined elsewhere or implied. Requirements for increasing max speed are limited to

• Minimal engine power to vehicle weight ("1. Stosunek maksymalnej mocy netto silnika autobusu do dopuszczalnej masy całkowitej powinien wynosić co najmniej 11 kW/t.")
• Breaking certification ("Autobus powinien być typu homologowanego w zakresie hamowania według Regulaminu nr 13 EKG ONZ zgodnie co najmniej z 06 serią poprawek.")
• Explosion of a single front tire is not catastrophic ("3.42) Autobus powinien być przebadany przez producenta z wynikiem pozytywnym w zakresie stateczności ruchu po rozerwaniu jednej z opon kół osi przedniej; nie dotyczy typu homologowanego w zakresie hamowania według Regulaminu nr 13 EKG ONZ zgodnie z co najmniej 11 serią poprawek.")
• Speed logger is mandatory
• Speed limiter is mandatory
• Minimal tire quality is defined
• Tire certification is required
• Seats must be covered by fabric, minimal seat height is defined
• Seatbelt minimal requirements
• Seat minimal requirements are defined and seatbelts are mandatory for all seats
• Excluding old vehicles from this requirement
• Fabric covered armrests are mandatory
• Barrier protecting driver is mandatory
• Protection against uncontrollably moving luggage in passenger area is mandatory

Comparing to Key:coach

• no standing passengers are assumed
  • not matching with law requirements, though I am surprised. Maybe law is defining it because nobody in Poland is going to offer place for standing passengers for intercity travel? Or it is defined somewhere else?
• usually all the seats have seatbelts, a requirement in many countries
  • matches
• they have extensive luggage space, usually under the floor of the passenger compartment
  • not matching with law requirements
• Individual seats with armrests reflecting a generally higher level of fittings.
  • matches
• Seats may be reclinable too.
  • not matching with law requirements
• they often have additional facilities such as an on-board toilet, USB charging points, entertainment systems or other conveniences
  • not matching with law requirements
• A luggage rack for small items above the seats
  • not matching with law requirements (though partially implied by the last requirement)

I am not really sure how I feel about this.

Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

The one that matters from the point of view of law requirements are IMO "Seatbelt minimal requirements, Seat minimal requirements are defined and seatbelts are mandatory for all seats". That e.g. the seats may have USB chargers are certainly not any requirements. The text on the wiki page is but a description of what these kinds of buses usually are, so that people know what this tag is about and how it differs from the usual transit bus. Anyway, I would go with your local knowledge here - if you see transit-buses with 100-km/h stickers in Poland, then, apparently, maxspeed:bus=100 should be tagged --Westnordost (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Also, tagging everything maxspeed:coach=100 here (for the other countries as well) is also not completely correct, obviously, but I think it is closer to the truth than putting 80 for coach-like buses. In the case of the coaches as described in the wiki, I more often see those 100-stickers than not. That does not mean that there are no coaches with no 100-stickers and no transit-type-buses with one, but it is a clear tendency --Westnordost (talk) 16:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Resolved: explained mapping of legislation text to OSM tags in the case of coaches

Thanks for starting this page

I was not even aware that it is so complicated Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:43, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

Germany: trucks on motorway etc.

According to § 18 Abs 5 Nr. 1 StVO speed limit for "standard" trucks over 3.5t is 80 km/h on motorways and the other highways regulated there. Your table implies it's 60 for all trucks over 7.5t. 60 km/h only applies to "a) Krafträder mit Anhänger und selbstfahrende Arbeitsmaschinen mit Anhänger, b) Zugmaschinen mit zwei Anhängern sowie c)Kraftomnibusse mit Anhänger oder mit Fahrgästen, für die keine Sitzplätze mehr zur Verfügung stehen", according to Nr. 2. -- TZorn (talk) 18:44, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that's right, thank you for the notice. I made a mistake, there. It's good to have someone else proof-read the data collected in this table. If I already make mistakes with reading the legislation for my home country, I am sure that for other countries, I also made mistakes. Please, feel invited to snoop around more for mistakes, the links to the legislations are all there, at least :-)

So anyway, I processed the German law another time. What I changed is now basically to remove the 7.5t restriction for motorways and motorroads with dual carriageways. Also, I noticed that the law makes special weight exceptions for PKW (passenger cars), under which also mobile homes fall: Passenger cars above 3.5t may still go 100 km/h and no limit on the motorway. So, I corrected the values for motor homes, but did not introduce a new vehicle category, "passenger_car", because passenger cars above 3.5t that are actually not motorhomes are quite the rare case. In the different legislations around the world, there are quite a few weird edge cases which I did not include, for example that tractors towing a trailer specifically designed for carrying sugar cane may not exceed 50 km/h in Queensland, Australia (and only there) (there are other funny cases, as well ;-) --Westnordost (talk) 20:46, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Resolved: integrated into table

Complex U.S. states

Is the plan to include as much detail as possible for the U.S. in this table? In the case of a jurisdiction like Ohio, where state laws are relatively complex and difficult to map to OSM tags, would a subset of rules be included? For example, one rule that can be consistently applied throughout the state is maxspeed:golf_cart=35 mph. :^D – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 22:32, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, it will always be a projection, but the goal is to be as precise as possible, yeah. Though, I deliberately left out certain vehicle types, see the paragraph below the (first) table:

"Certain vehicle types are mentioned in some legislations but have been omitted from this table. These are not relevant for routing, because they go very slow and oftentimes, the maximum speed set by law is actually their maximum achievable speed. A non-exhaustive list: delivery-robots, mofas, mopeds, tractors and any other kind of agricultural vehicles and construction vehicles." --Westnordost (talk) 22:42, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I "accepted your challenge" and added Ohio. You are right, Ohio is the most confuse legislation I have read so far for creating this table. It makes distinctions between business districts, urban, inside muncipal corporations and outside muncipal corpations... and "island legislation". I tried to simplify this a little, but yeah. Anyway, I tried to project the legislation as best as I could but left out all those rules which will obviously be signed with explicit speed limits: school zones and any paragraph that contained "as determined by the director", because if the director determines it (and not the individual driver), then this director will post actual speed limit signs.

I also added sources to every item there, in case you want to retrace how I got to these categories

Thinking about the complexity of these rules, I got the impression that, like probably in Idaho, these paragraphs actually apply to what speed limits the government agency must signpost rather than what speed limits every driver in Ohio needs to know by heart. Could this be?

In Europe, it is common to not see maxspeed signs at all for many stretches of the road, in which case default limits apply, but they are usually few and easy to remember, like for example 50 within city limits and 100 outside, 130 on motorways. In US, that might be different? --Westnordost (talk) 19:32, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

A lot of speed limits go unposted in Ohio. In suburban areas, few residential subdivisions have posted speed limit signs, but drivers are expected to know that the speed limit is 25 mph. In rural areas, township roads rarely have posted speed limits. Speed limit signs indicate the start and continuation of a speed zone, but unlike in Europe, there's no general-purpose sign saying that the speed limit reverts to an implicit one. There's an "end school zone" sign, but it isn't always used. I think you're right about "as determined by the director" in practice: it would defy common sense for a community to pay for studies and convince the director to make such an exception but then fail to signpost the exception. At a glance, I'm not sure whether this table covers all the rules, but it's a good start. In particular, I'd be surprised if speed limits were signposted on the islands in Lake Erie. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 02:03, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

In regards to lake Eerie etc., I deliberately left out those from the table because these kind of regulations boil down to legislations that say "in this or that city, the speed limit is X". The projection in this table is supposed to be country/state level, something that can be determined per ISO-code. There are some other countries that put these kind of micro-regulations in the law, such as the Seychelles. I think for these cases, it is less work (and also less maintenance work) to simply tag the few roads there with the limit set in the law than to bother finding a default-to scheme for that.

Generally, my aim is not to have a good start, but to have a mapping as complete as it makes sense --Westnordost (talk) 09:07, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate that and didn't mean to downplay the amazing amount of effort you've put into this table. For what it's worth, Ohio mappers have been explicitly tagging speed limits even when they're implicit, because of the lack of software support for implicit speed limits. So in practice there should be no problem with leaving out the more obscure provisions. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 18:35, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

For another perspective, here's the Digest of Ohio Motor Vehicle Laws, the state driver's handbook. A driving test could ask about any of the speed limits on page 44. Note how it makes no reference to signage, because the driver is technically responsible for knowing these limits. (The weight-dependent speed limits would only appear on CDL tests, not for ordinary driver's licenses.) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 02:08, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

The limits that are in the table now are pulled directly from the law. For review, I also added the exact article § number there. I'd say that if the handbook deviates from it, it is rather the handbook that is wrong than the information in the law. In particular, the handbook mentions "65 mph at all times on freeways with paved shoulders inside municipal corporations" but the law dictates 55 mph. Also, the handbook mentions trucks weighting over 8,000 pounds and commercial buses, but in the law, I do not see any mention of it. Can you point me to the article in the law that mentions this? --Westnordost (talk) 09:07, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

It looks like this is an old version of the handbook. The Ohio General Assembly harmonized truck and car speed limits in 2013 [1], at the same time it increased several speed limits statewide. I can't find a newer version of the handbook online [2], but I would expect it to match the legal code. Anyways, my point is that drivers are expected to know the implicit speed limits in the absence of signage, so the law isn't only relevant to highway agencies within the state. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 18:35, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Resolved: added Ohio etc

Germany: Default speed limits don't apply to bicycles

"Die zulässige Höchstgeschwindigkeit beträgt auch unter günstigsten Umständen innerhalb geschlossener Ortschaften für alle Kraftfahrzeuge 50 km/h"

Means the default limit of 50km/h inside of settlements only applies to motor vehicles, not to bicycles. Depending on the incline, bicycle and the rider, it's not that hard to go faster.

The 100km/h default outside of settlements doesn't apply either but only very few people can go faster.

--Wulf4096 (talk) 06:21, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

omitting bicycles is also deliberate. The reason why there seems to be a hole in the otherwise so tight German law here is because of the (reasonable) assumption that non-motor-vehicles (e.g. also horse carriages) can go as fast as they can without breaking any speed limits. (If they regularly would, I bet the law would be changed to include bicyclists) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Westnordost (talk • contribs) 06:58, 14 August 2018

Resolved: explained that omission of bicycles is deliberate

Finnish motorways

There is no distinct default speed limit in Finland for motorways; the only default speed limits are living street (20 km/h), urban (50 km/h) and all other roads (80 km/h). There are, however, the maximum speed limits for some vehicle types as listed in the motorway row; these apply on all roads regardless of the road speed limit. So we should probably remove the motorway row, but what to do with the vehicle type limits? --ZeiP (talk) 22:44, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, if that is so, I guess the motorway column needs to be removed. On the other hand, I got the data that is in the table currently from the source linked - that expat driver's handbook. I would rather not deviate from the information given in the source and only correct the data if a better source (i.e. actual law text) can be found for verifiability reasons --Westnordost (talk) 23:12, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Here is the law defining general speed limits (”yleisnopeusrajoitus”): http://finlex.fi/fi/laki/alkup/2018/20180729#Pidp447158256 and the bit defining the living street speed limit: http://finlex.fi/fi/laki/alkup/2018/20180729#Pidp449131152 . It's a confirmed law, but actually applies only starting June 1st, 2020. For some reason I didn't find any general speed limits in the current law on road traffic (”tieliikennelaki”), but I'm pretty sure this bit hasn't changed. --ZeiP (talk) 23:30, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Nice! I updated the table now using the new sources. Legislation on light commercial vehicles and motorhomes are a bit complicated because they may go only 80 unless they either weigh less than 1.8t OR less than 1.875t if newer than 1995 OR have an airbag for the driver + ABS, in which case they may go 100. I put in 100 unconditionally because I think nowadays airbag for the driver + ABS is somewhat the standard equipment for cars, right? --Westnordost (talk) 18:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Resolved: updated table

United Kingdom - de-facto EU speed limits for trucks and buses

Regardless of what the UK government says, a lot of UK registered trucks are limited to 90 km/h and UK registered coaches to 100 km/h. This is a necessity, if there will be a possibility of the vehicles being driven in mainland Europe, and is likely to remain the case regardless of what happens on March 29. The coach I travel to work on is limited to 100 km/h - which the drivers make maximum use of - and signage in the coach indicates it is limited to this speed. In my own car I often drive at 100 km/h, as indicated on my satnav, and cannot remember the last time a bus overtook me on the motorway when I was doing that speed. And1969 (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

This table only captures the legal speed limits, not the maximum speeds the vehicles go for one reason or another (practicality, compatibility with other country's legislation, the fact that maybe a different speed limit is always expected to be signed everywhere, driving conditions such as traffic jams or damaged roads,...).

Resolved: answered

Large non-bus vehicles in Vietnam

Vietnam [3][4] has distinct speed limits for "Motor vehicles for transport of more than 30 people (except buses)". I'm not sure what kind of vehicle would carry so many people but not be a bus. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 08:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe combination buses, a.k.a truck buses? In Thailand there are small truck buses known as Songthaeows

Or maybe what simply is meant is (dump) trucks bringing construction workers to the construction site?

--Westnordost (talk) 11:10, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

At a glance, it does seem to fit the bill. Unfortunately I'm having difficulty finding the Vietnamese word for such vehicles, which would help us confirm whether that was intended to be covered by the Vietnamese phrase "Xe ô tô chở người trên 30 chỗ (trừ xe buýt)" or whether it would fall under the category of "specialized vehicles" or "heavy-duty vehicles". – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 17:15, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

coach=* and tourist_bus=*? Often "city bus", the "bus" in common English meaning, with standing space are assigned a lower top speed limit. The 30 passenger limit is a reasonable one dividing coach minibus and standard heavy coach bus. -- Kovposch (talk) 06:26, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

In this case, a motor vehicle with a capacity over 30 is treated the same way as an HGV, unless it's a bus (xe buýt), in which case it maintains the same higher speed as lower-capacity motor vehicles. Both coach=* and tourist_bus=* would be called xe đò in Vietnamese. Both xe đò and xe buýt (bus) are considered subtypes of xe chở người (passenger vehicles), but it doesn't seem like xe đò is often described as a subtype of xe buýt. So I think it would be safe to indicate the lower speed limit for over-30-person vehicles as applying to coach=* and tourist_bus=*. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 04:00, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Resolved: integrated it

How it differs from OSM tags for routing/Maxspeed

OSM tags for routing/Maxspeed seems very similar Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny: This page appears to be a reimplementation of that older page with an emphasis on machine readability and rigorous citations. Both machine readability and citations are important for the concept of a "default speed limit" to work from a data consumer standpoint. At least one tool is already parsing this page. Personally, I'd prefer to see the canonical, machine-readable representation originate from a Git repository that can automatically generate a human-readable table (either HTML or wikitext). We aren't really taking advantage of the wiki's capabilities when we expect people to conform to a rigid format manually (cf. the old Template:Calendar before OSMCal), and the more conversions between formats, the more room for error. Does the older page contain anything that this page does not? – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 01:25, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Resolved: answered

California business districts

In some U.S. states, "business districts" have different default rules about speed limits and U-turns being allowed. The page currently captures that determination with a catch-all is_business_district variable that maps to abutters~^mixed|retail|commercial$. However, I don't think that's enough nuance, since each state has a different definition of a business district, and some of these definitions defy tagging. For example, in California, "Churches, apartments, multifamily housing units, and public buildings [and the streets in front] are considered to be business districts." [5] In practice, no business district would go without a speed limit sign in California, which is one of the most aggressive states in the country when it comes to posting traffic signs and signals. But if any data consumer extends this tagging suggestion to other restrictions dependent on business districts, for example to determine whether U-turns are permitted across a center turn lane away from an intersection, then there will be mistakes all over the place. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 01:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

The state highway department's authoritative definition of a business district matches that quote above. [6] – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:40, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I included definitions of California business and residential districts as cite refs. Though, it doesn't matter much, as residential + business districts have the same speed limit and then one can simply extrapolate that pretty much all built-up area ("urban") has the same speed limit --Westnordost (talk) 12:32, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Resolved

Wrong values in the tables for Italy

I am going to make some corrections in the section regarding default speed limits in Italy:

• The speed limits for buses shown in the tabel (80, 70 (8 t) outside build-up areas and 100, 80 (8 t) on motorways) is wrong. According to art. 142 par. 3 point f of Highway Code the speed limit for buses over 8 t is 80 km/h outside build-up areas and 100 km/h; for other buses the aren't specific speed limits (so the same 90-110-130 of cars, motorcycles applies).
• In the speed limits for truck buses shown in the tabel there is a reference to a speed limit of 80 km/h outside built-up area and 100 km/h on motorways which is not indicated at all in the Highway Code. Considering that the use of truck in order to carry people is an exceptional and temporary situation that requires case by case approval from the Ministery of Transport, I suggest to delete all the data for this category of vehicles for Italy considering what is stated in section "Deliberate omissions" of the page
• I would point out that, unfortunately, it is impossible to match exactly the motorroad tag and the Italian road category know as strada extraurbana principale (litteraly main rural road), which is represented by third row. In fact Italy has two kind of road to which the tag motorroad is applied: strada extraurbana principale ( sign, which is a specific sublcass of highway type) and ( sign, which is a sign that can be applied both on urban and rural road and does not imply specific speed limit). Also the use of the tag trunk is not helpful since it refers only to roads without at-grade crossing, regardless of the legal classification.

If none oppose these changes, I will change the table in the next days. Greetings, --Urbis13 (talk) 13:14, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your changes. I went over Italy again looking for updated sources etc and added some references. Truck buses may be a temporary situation in many countries, some do not have even any regulation about it, but in others, they are part of the normal public transport (e.g. Thailand, Myanmar, pretty much all of the ex Soviet Union, parts of Africa,...) and hence they have regulation accordingly. However, I added a cite note for the truck buses, mentioning that thing you wrote about the exceptionality. --Westnordost (talk) 12:32, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Resolved

More authoritative source of U.S. legal codes

This page currently links to many unofficial copies of U.S. state legal codes, such as on Justia. Justia is a reputable source and usually quite reliable. But I think we should instead link to the authoritative copies of legal codes published by most state legislatures or legislative commissions, when possible, in order to provide access to the actual statutes that have been codified. For example, [7] is better than [8], and [9] is better than [10]. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 17:48, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

An official source is better than an unofficial source and an improvement to this wiki article except in the rare case that the unofficial source happens to be more up-to-date, in which case the unofficial source is preferred.

Furthermore, any source that points to the actual legislation/regulation text is better than any source that merely points to e.g. an overview or other kind of secondary source - whether the latter is an official source or not, (e.g. Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, SCHEDULE 6 is better than Speed limits, even though basically the same table is shown), with the exception of course that if the latter is more up-to-date. In that case, both should be referenced with a note that the legislation text is outdated.

Use the graphical editor to make changes, editing the source is not practical except maybe for updating <ref> --Westnordost (talk) 19:59, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, so do you agree that the Justia links should be replaced? For U.S. state legal codes, the official sources are guaranteed to be more up-to-date than the unofficial sources. There are also rare instances in which even the official published legal code omits details that are in the statutes as passed, in which case it's helpful that the state legislature's version links to the authenticated copy of the statute, though I have no reason to believe that has happened to any laws regarding speed limits. I won't make this change right now, because many of the U.S. state entries are in need for a larger overhaul as seen below, but please keep it in mind as you perform any updates. Thanks! – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Not "should", but "can", and that would be an improvement to the wiki page. In other words, current links are fine and I don't bother to change them but you or anyone else is welcome to do so. --Westnordost (talk)

Resolved: Answered, added sentence in contribution guidelines