Something must have just frozen over

Schumer launches major push to prevent bridge strikes that have plagued Westchester County for decades. Senator calls on leading GPS developers to integrate data warning commercial vehicle drivers of road restrictions, promote driver safety & decrease traffic
2.23.20

Currently, GPS applications — Google Maps, Apple Maps & Waze — do not contain data warning commercial drivers of roadway restrictions such as maximum vehicle height. In the last decade, the King Street bridge in Westchester County has been struck ~150 times.

With no end in sight to major uptick in bridge strikes, Schumer urges smartphone-nased GPS application developers to implement a warning system for commercial vehicle drivers to alert them of restrictions & hazards.

Schumer to GPS industry: One more bridge strike is one too many.

This is probably the first time I've ever agreed with anything coming out of Chuck Schumer's office.

It would seem to me that roadway restrictions (height, weight, width, noise, etc.) should be something that app makers can add to the map database. The information should already be available, because it's printed in commercial road atlases.

Once added to the database, it shouldn't be that hard to update the app (or release a commercial version) where you tell it about your vehicle (size, weight, trailer count/size, etc.), allowing the app to remove routes where it is impossible, dangerous or illegal to drive that vehicle.

Hopefully, the app makers won't have to to a lot of redesign in order to add this feature. It seems that makers of standalone GPS devices already have this capability in their truck-oriented devices.