highway=rest_area in Denmark

I was taking a look at some possibly wrong highway=service + service=rest_area and found that most of them are located in Denmark, as can be seen at http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/fMq

Shouldn’t they all be highway=rest_area instead? Or there is some kind of difference and valid usage for this tagging in Denmark, please?

Hi. I’m responsible for the vast majority of those found in Denmark. I “invented” the tag several years ago because after some experimentation I found highway=rest_area entirely inappropriate for what I wanted to do, I never got around to actually document my use of it, which I would agree is a bit unfortunate, but basically it’s intended and not a mistake. I do not agree in changing it to highway=rest_area , since I always found the definition of this tag to be quite crappy.

For some time now I have tagged a single node highway=rest_area at each “rest area” I’ve come across though, so that people should be able to search for them though. I’m not sure I’ve got around to do this everywhere yet, but I’ll look into that now.