Rough road ahead: RVers can now flag the bad stretches

Between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, I-10 crosses the Atchafalaya Basin on 18 miles of bridge. We've crossed it in our coach, and it rides rough. It's also a hard place to have trouble: when a vehicle breaks down out there, traffic can sit for hours, because there's no way to turn around.

The map data our routing runs on rates the whole drive from Lafayette to Baton Rouge as smooth pavement. Map data records what a road is paved with, not how it rides, so a 50-year-old concrete bridge looks the same as fresh asphalt. RVers know how it rides, and now they can mark it. Flag a rough stretch from the cab, and drivers behind you hear about it before the first jolt.

The map knows the pavement, not the ride

RV Compass routes on OpenStreetMap data, which is very good at what a road is made of: asphalt, concrete, gravel, dirt. It has almost nothing on what shape a road is in. When we checked the Gulf South, fewer than 1 in 100 road segments carried any smoothness information at all. Among the major highways, it was fewer than 4 in 100. The people who know how a road rides are the ones who just drove it.

Flag it from the cab

When you hit a rough stretch while navigating, tap Report, then Rough road. RV Compass starts recording right where you are. A dotted gold line follows you along the route, the length counts up in a bar at the bottom of the screen, and voice guidance confirms it: "Recording rough road. Tap smooth again when it ends." When the road smooths out, tap Smooth again. That's the whole report.

No signal? Finished reports wait on your phone and send on their own once you're back in range. If you forget to tap Smooth again, recording ends itself at 50 miles, so one missed tap can't paint half a state.

A heads-up for the rig behind you

The next driver heading the same way gets a spoken warning about three-quarters of a mile before the stretch starts: "Rough road ahead for about 12 miles." A banner shows how far away it is and how long it lasts, and once you're in it, a pill counts down the miles left until you're through. If drivers have marked a stretch as bad enough to avoid in an RV, the warning adds: "Drivers say avoid it if you can."

Reports run one way. A stretch reported westbound warns westbound drivers, and the eastbound side gets its own reports. The warnings keep working in dead zones, too.

"Still rough back there?"

Just past the end of a stretch, RV Compass asks: "Still rough back there?" Answer Still rough and the report stays alive for the next driver. Answer Smooth now and you're voting to clear it. Once Smooth now answers outnumber Still rough by two, the stretch clears for everyone. Reports nobody confirms age out after six months, so the map doesn't fill up with last year's potholes.

Say what's wrong, later

Nobody should be typing at 60 miles an hour, so the details wait. When you end a trip, the recap lists the rough roads you flagged. For each one you can say how rough it was, from Uncomfortable to Avoid in an RV, and what's wrong with it, whether that's potholes or rough bridge joints. There's room for a short note to the next driver, too. All of it is optional.

On the web, Road reports shows every stretch you've flagged or confirmed, on a map. You can add the same details there, or trim either end of a stretch you reported if you started recording a little early or stopped a little late. Until someone else confirms a report, you can also remove it. Other drivers see how many rigs reported a stretch and when it was last confirmed, never who.

See it before you leave

Plan a trip on the web and reported stretches show up right on your route as dotted gold lines, for your direction of travel. Click one to see how long it is, how many drivers reported it, when it was last confirmed, and what they said about it. The route report adds a Rough roads section to Why this route, with a line for each stretch, like "4.1 mi · Slow down · confirmed 2 weeks ago."

Avoid rough roads, when it's worth it

Sometimes the smart move is to go around. Turn on Avoid rough roads in a trip's settings and RV Compass plans around the reported stretches it can. The route report tells you exactly what that cost: "Avoided 19.6 mi of reported rough road (+49 min, +23.9 mi)." If there's no way around, you keep your original route and the report says so.

That cost is why it's off until you turn it on. When we measured it, routing a rig around the Basin turned a 71-minute drive from Lafayette to Baton Rouge into a two-hour one. On a day when the bridge is backed up, that could be a bargain. Most days, you'll want to see the price first.

Once a trip is planned around rough roads, your phone navigates the route you planned. If you recalculate or add a stop along the way, the new route keeps steering around the reported stretches ahead.

The map data will keep calling that bridge smooth. The rig behind you will know better.