How do you consider a route to be travelled?

[kjslaughter]

Curiosity question.  How does everyone consider a route to be travelled?  Do you have to be the one driving the car?  Do you count if you are just a passenger?  Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?

Personally, if I was in the vehicle on the road, I count it, be it me driving my car, passenger, taxi or bus.  That method means I'm including a trip to Arkansas when I was 2 years old 40 years ago, but it's lifetime travels, right?

[Jim]

I count all of those.  Almost all of my clinched routes are ones from my teenage years or more recent, so I have at least some recollection.  But not all.  For example, I haven't been on a good chunk of I-80 in western Nebraska and I-76 in Colorado since I was 6 years old and was probably asleep in the back seat for much of that ride.

[oscar]

Curiosity question.  How does everyone consider a route to be travelled?  Do you have to be the one driving the car?  Do you count if you are just a passenger?  Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?

Heck, I would include walking the route. That's how I've covered some temporary route gaps in North America, and also some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car. Also, the only routes I've traveled in Italy (except as a baby, since I have no way of figuring out how my family in 1957 got from Rome's old airport to Naples) were in a taxi from one of Milan's airports, and a bus to the other airport.

We map one route in Michigan (state route 185, an eight-mile loop around Mackinac Island) that is off-limits to motor vehicles except emergency vehicles or other rare exceptions. More than two dozen of our users have clinched it, by horse-drawn carriage, on a bicycle, and/or on foot.

[michih]

I would include walking the route.

Me too!

[si404]

Do you count if you are just a passenger?  Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?

Not particularly sure why being a passenger in a bus is more extreme than as a passenger in a car - its fundamentally the same thing. The other passengers?

I've got travels walking, cycling, as a passenger (inc in a bus). I would have at least a segment in 'extreme' ways such as walking backwards, running, riding in a shopping cart but I've got those segments more normal ways anyway.

There will be segments I travelled in a pushchair, asleep, but either I haven't added them as I don't know quite what they were, or I've re-travelled them.

some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car.

I imagine because it would have been a breach of Terms and Conditions? I can see why - foreign driver doesn't pay the charge, rental company gets a fine, can't easily just charge it to the card.

I think, when I was little (about 5 or 6), I went inside that area (before it was a thing) in a car, but all my travels mapped (and I've got about 90% - just some B roads untravelled) within the Congestion Charge Zone (and most of those in the area outside it) are on-foot.

[Markkos1992]

Curiosity question.  How does everyone consider a route to be travelled?  Do you have to be the one driving the car?  Do you count if you are just a passenger?  Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?

Heck, I would include walking the route. That's how I've covered some temporary route gaps in North America, and also some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car. Also, the only routes I've traveled in Italy (except as a baby, since I have no way of figuring out how my family in 1957 got from Rome's old airport to Naples) were in a taxi from one of Milan's airports, and a bus to the other airport.

We map one route in Michigan (state route 185, an eight-mile loop around Mackinac Island) that is off-limits to motor vehicles except emergency vehicles or other rare exceptions. More than two dozen of our users have clinched it, by horse-drawn carriage, on a bicycle, and/or on foot.

I have had times where I walked the route because it was closed for an event in a town back when we had those pre-COVID.

[jayhawkco]

As long as I'm within 10 feet of the surface of the road, it doesn't matter if I'm in the driver's seat, the passenger seat, or in a double decker bus, that means I traveled the route.  On AARoads people were trying to claim clinched counties that they flew over.  That's madness.

I've traveled pretty extensively internationally and I wouldn't have most of those routes if I didn't count being in a car someone else was driving.

Chris

[Markkos1992]

On AARoads people were trying to claim clinched counties that they flew over.  That's madness.

Did they not read the Mob-Rule home page?

The rules are simple: you visit a county, then you count it. To visit a county, just cross the plane of the county line. Usually, you visit a county in a car, but it is possible to visit counties by biking, hiking, or even skiing. Generally, we don't count flying over a county, especially flying in a commercial jet airplane (it's just too hard to see the signs that say "Entering Beaufort County").

[kjslaughter]

  Did they not read the Mob-Rule home page?

The rules are simple: you visit a county, then you count it. To visit a county, just cross the plane of the county line. Usually, you visit a county in a car, but it is possible to visit counties by biking, hiking, or even skiing. Generally, we don't count flying over a county, especially flying in a commercial jet airplane (it's just too hard to see the signs that say "Entering Beaufort County").

My thoughts exactly!  And here's my map for reference: http://www.mob-rule.com/user-gifs/USA/kjslaughter.gif

On TripAdvisor, there is a city visited map option.  Look under member profile and then Travel Map if you haven't done this.  My sister and I made separate rules for that.  Airport layovers don't count and to count a visit to a city we decided your feet have to touch the ground.  So driving through Shreveport only counts if you stop and buy gas.

And I was listing buses as extreme because I know when on bus trips as a teen at least that you would be distracted by multiple things and not really paying attention to the route and sites along it.  Some of y'all's examples are definitely more extreme than what I was thinking!

[bejacob]

For me, the mode of transit isn't important. What matters is knowing I traveled a particular road segment.

The majority of my mapped travels on this site were done in a car, either mine or a rental, and more often than not, I was driving solo. I do have a few places where I was the passenger in someone's car or a taxi. Likewise there are a handful where I was in a bus.

There are some routes that I have traversed, but without being able to definitively say the exact route, those are not included. I'm pretty sure my family drove along CA1 between LA and SFO when I was a kid as I remember stopping at San Simeon. Unfortunately, without knowing the starting and ending points or where we might have deviated from the route, I've only included the parts of the PCH I have driven myself.

How I traveled a stretch of road isn't important. As long as I know I covered a route by some means, it's in.

[Jim]

I'll also add that I have to be pretty sure when it's old travels.  For example, in 1978 we made our first family trip to Florida.  I know that either on that trip or another in subsequent years, we took US 1 all the way to the end, so I count that.  I think there were still gaps in I-95 and I-75 that probably meant we traveled some stretches of US 1, US 17, US 41, etc. that I can't really verify, so I don't include those unless I've knowingly traveled them myself since.  This includes an irksome chunk of US 41 between Port Charlotte and Venice that I just can't seem to justify taking, despite dozens of trips to SWFL via I-75 through that area over the last couple of decades.  I'd say there's a 90% chance we drove it in 1978.

[osu-lsu]

Far as I'm concern any method counts....EXCEPT THE FOLLOWING

• Google Streetview/Google Earth
• Air travel (already mentioned above)
• Drone video

[kjslaughter]

I'll also add that I have to be pretty sure when it's old travels.

Yeah, my trip when I was 2 to Arkansas is listed only because I asked my dad what route we would have taken and he told me across US 82 from Birmingham.  In hindsight, I'm guessing a bunch of that route has rerouted onto bypasses since 1979.  Maybe if and when Mississippi state highways are added I'll go back and adjust the route to be more accurate.  Similar story for US 331 between Montgomery and Destin, though I have travelled big chunks of that route myself since then.

Thankfully, once I was older like 8 and up, my love of maps made me the navigator on vacation so I am much more sure of all other family vacation routes.  :-)

[Spinoza]

I count routes only if I'm driving myself. I don't like my stats to be incomplete, and I cannot remember exactly all the roads my father drove when I was a kid in the backseat.
But yes, in principle I would count also biking or walking, as long as I do that firsthand. Until now, though, it never happened that I biked or walked a road that I didn't drive on.

[andrepoiy]

I only count it when driving myself, although I have created another list file of clinched roads with other methods (as passenger, bus, etc.). I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to have two files on the database so I did not upload.