CrossCountryRoads.com

CrossCountryRoads.com is a web site dedicated to collecting images and videos of freeways in the United States. From the About section of the site:

The idea for CrossCountryRoads.com came about when I, Tom Valazak, wanted to share my road and trip experiences with the world. I had been taking road pictures for a while, and needed an easy way to share them with other road enthusiasts like myself. I started out small, posting some pictures on MySpace and Facebook, but this didn't solve the issue because then only people who knew me could see my road pictures. That is when it hit me: Start a website containing all the road pictures and videos I have compiled on my different trips, so that any other road enthusiast could see the pictures with a simple internet search. From this basic idea, CrossCountryRoads.com came into existence.

. The way to do this is to add source=crosscountryroads.com to your changeset.

Site Content

At the time of writing, November 2015, the site contains images and video footage of more than 40 states. This is a typical example image:

Example from the site. Source: http://crosscountryroads.com/Pictures/indiana/in_i70wb.html

Usage in OSM

The site's creator and maintainer, Tom Valazak, has generously granted OSM permission to use the imagery and video footage, under the following condition: all changesets shall credit crosscountryroads.com as the source of the information. In Tom's own words (from an email conversation with Martijn van Exel (talk)):

If you guys just want to use the content of the site for information in making the mapping and road data more accurate, then yes, by all means you can look at my site's content and use the information in it to compare to the information already in OSM. In fact, that is pretty much one of the reasons I do this, is to make that kind of information public for anyone who might be able to put it to use to improve something.

As long as they are crediting the source of this information (my website), then I have no problem with what you proposed. Now if they were going to actually post pictures or videos somewhere within their work, that is when I would step up and put forth more strict guidelines.

In summary, yes, you guys can use the pictures and videos on my site as a reference tool for improving OSM, as long as the credits to my site appear as you have said they would.

Any other questions, just let me know. Thank you for your interest in my work!

What to map from this resource

There is a lot of information to be gleaned from the images and video:

• Signposting (using the destination=* convention)
• Lane counts
• Speed limits