Talk:Tag:crossing=zebra

Deprecate this tag

This tagging method is ambiguous. In some parts of the world, eg. continental Europe, there can be "zebra" road markings for both uncontrolled crossings and crossings with traffic signals. I would recommend to deprecate crossing=zebra and use crossing=* only to indicate whether there are traffic signals, and crossing_ref=* to mention the type of road markings to be found. This solution would also work in the UK. Bxl-forever (talk) 12:43, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I would not see it as a problem, at a crossing=zebra the highest control are the zebra markings, on a traffic signal controlled crossing you tag the signals, regardless of the actual markings.

I agree this shortcut does require additional tags if you want to also tag the physical markings and not only the highest kind of control.—Dieterdreist (talk) 20:29, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Deprecation controversy?

There's a link to ID/Controversial_Decisions#Changing_crossing=zebra_to_crossing=marked. But that chapter is empty. What's going on? What's the status of "controversy"? Is it still valid? —Victor.yarema (talk) 23:40, 09 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, from my understanding this is currently still under discussion, and the idea that crossing=zebra should be deprecated is not commonly shared.—Dieterdreist (talk) 07:51, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Dear Dieterdreist. Thanks for clarification. Do you know by chance where can I find the main discussion? I can't see any link to it in this article. --Victor.yarema (talk) 08:13, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

'zebra' is a UK centric colloquialism/nickname. It wasn't understood worldwide which is why the crossing_ref tag was implemented. It's this tag which should be used, in conjunction with crossing=marked, as a zebra crossing isn't 'uncontrolled'. It's the pedestrian wanting to cross who acts as the 'control' forcing the motor vehicle to stop. Crossing=zebra should be deprecated.--DaveF63 (talk) 17:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm tagging a lot (many thousands, new and existing in OSM) of zebra crossings in Nederland, a challenge of the month thing. We have a source that detects zebras from aerial imaging, and a QGIS map comparing this source to OSM nodes tagged as zebra. It is very clear that different tagging schemes for crossings and zebras have been used over time, within the community, and even single mappers will change methods all the time. Also, there is no indication that any tagging scheme will prevail any time soon. BTW zebra is a very common word for the well known striped pedestrian crossing in many countries; most people don't know about the British animal series of crossings. In addition, crossings are marked in different ways, and to make matters worse, marked crossings are not limited to pedestrians. I'm not even going to think about resolving this issue. My advice to mappers would be to always add one tag with the value 'zebra', so data users can look for this value for the keys crossing, crossing:marking or crossing_ref (or simply any key with the value zebra). --Peter Elderson (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2024 (UTC)