Terms of use
Last updated 5 August 2026
By using The Right of Way you agree to what follows. If you do not, please do not use the site.
Nothing you submit here reaches any agency. The site is not connected to any government system and does not forward reports. If a hazard is dangerous right now — a downed sign, a dark signal, debris in a travel lane — call 911 or your state's 511 line. Do not rely on this site for anything urgent.
What the site does
It takes a point on a map, asks the US Census Bureau which state, county, and municipality that point falls in, asks OpenStreetMap what road it is, and from that names the authority most likely to be responsible. It then gives you that authority's contact route and keeps a dated public record. Contacting the agency remains your job, and the site says so at every step.
Accuracy, and its limits
Jurisdiction determinations are best-effort and are provided as-is. OpenStreetMap coverage is uneven, particularly in rural areas; route numbers are sometimes missing or out of date; and a road on a boundary can be genuinely ambiguous. This is why the site asks you to confirm against the sign actually posted. We make no warranty that a determination is correct, and you should not treat one as a legal finding of responsibility.
Response-time targets shown on the site — 14 days municipal, 21 county, 30 state — are conventional expectations we chose for comparison. They are not statutory deadlines and no agency has agreed to them.
What you agree to when you submit
- Everything you submit as a report becomes a public and permanent record. Assume it cannot be taken back.
- You will not include personal information about anyone — no names, no house numbers, no phone numbers, no vehicle plates. Automatic scrubbing catches addresses, phone numbers, and emails; it cannot catch names.
- You will report only defects you have actually observed, and you will confirm a repair only if you have actually seen it. The counts on this site are only worth something if they are true.
- You will not submit anything unlawful, defamatory, harassing, or deliberately false, and you will not automate submissions.
- You grant us a non-exclusive, irrevocable right to publish, keep, and display what you submit as part of the public record, including in aggregate statistics.
Agency contact details
Contact details submitted by visitors are held privately and are not published until a moderator has verified them against the agency's own published site. We publish switchboards, not the direct line of any named individual. If you believe a published detail is wrong or should not be there, tell us and we will act on it.
Moderation and corrections
Every record carries a correction link, open to anyone. We aim to respond within seven days, or three working days where the request comes from a documented official source, during which the record is marked disputed and excluded from the scoreboard. We may redact a description, correct a record, or withdraw one from public view. Every moderation action is written to an append-only audit log.
Corrections are decided on evidence. They are not for sale, and a contribution buys no influence over any record, ranking, or dispute.
Contributions
Contributions are voluntary, are processed by Stripe, and are not tax-deductible. They support hosting, security, and verification work. They confer no ownership, no editorial control, and no ability to remove, hide, or promote a record. For a refund, contact us using the details at the end of this page.
Liability
The site is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for any loss, injury, damage, or cost arising from use of the site or from reliance on a jurisdiction determination, a contact detail, or a response-time figure shown here. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited. We do not guarantee the site will be available or uninterrupted.
Changes and contact
These terms may change; material changes will carry a new date at the top of this page. For questions, corrections, and refund requests, use the correction link on any record.