Bareways Road Conditions
Core Features
Detailed Surface Type Information
80% of all roads world-wide are unpaved and even paved roads may be in bad shape. Asphalt and concrete are standard materials for roads in metropolitan areas and the main routes but there are few states world-wide where minor roads are of the same quality. Gravel, dirt, sand and various mixtures thereof are ubiquitous in rural areas. The providers of navigation systems, mobility service and logistics are well aware of the fact that the road surface type strongly affects safety and estimated time to arrival but they lack data and means to access accurate surface type information. We provide a data layer to give mobility service access to precise road surface type information.
Smoothing the way
Typically, state authorities classify a road according to national standardization schemes into highways, primary roads, secondary roads or may have other local naming schemes. However, a primary road can be a major asphalt highway in northern America or just a gravel road in central Africa. Therefore, we provide access to vehicle sensor recordings to assess the smoothness of roads world-wide to allow more realistic classification of road quality.
Ever Changing Conditions
Poor quality roads suffer more from seasonal weather than frequently maintained highway roads. Thus, a single parameter is not able to capture the variety of conditions we may face on the very same road throughout a year, during the rainfall period or when ice is melting. We gathered data on the variability of road conditions depending on the weather and provide an API to predict the conditions given the local weather conditions.
Road Hazards
In many countries, static traffic signs are placed on main routes where frequent hazards are known such as crossing animals, slippery roads or falling rocks. However, these static signs provide only a very coarse estimate of the true risk and are seldom updated especially in rural areas. We have put together a comprehensive database of road safety information covering historical crash data, landslides, floodings, civil warnings and other emergency situations. Additionally, we provide access to a crowd-sourced incident data from users of our community app.