Saw this on HackerNews via @hn50@social.lansky.name
My Mastodon post about it & @watmildon@en.osm.town's reply linking to OpenStreetMap's documentation with an example to find banks far away from police stations
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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OSM can definitely find you a bank near a freeway ramp, but it can also find you a bank near a creek to make an inflatable boat getaway. What it can't do is arrange for decoys to confuse the police while you eacape.
The inflatable boat robber was ultimately caught and sentenced a year later.
As an aside, I will say that the examples from the OSM Overpass API are pretty nifty for other applications. For example, I once wanted to find the longest stretch of road within city limits that does not have a stop sign or traffic light, in order to fairly assess ebike range by running back and forth until out-of-battery. I knew at the time that OSM had the data, but I didn't know it could be queried in such a way. Would have saved me some manual searching, as well as broadening to include rural roads just outside the city.
The decoys story I believe got animated by Qxir on YouTube