Can anyone point me to actual conventions beyond naming/tagging? Since there is not a consensus and apparently my being from the area being mapped is actually a strike against me.

Also, your analogy makes no sense in this context. It is a straw man argument.

I don’t think my mother would want her private driveway on a map as a road. There isn’t a turnaround for more than one car and I doubt she would welcome the liability involved in having her driveway listed as a road in public maps. What if someone were to mistakenly take her driveway, be forced to back out and then wreck? The legal implications are really frightening.

I am confident that my mother’s dirt driveway is not, in fact, any sort of road, likewise those of her neighbors. I feel that there might be a language or localization issue at the heart of this - these driveways are unpaved, single lane, rural driveways just off a rural highway, leading directly to small single family homes, not private roads, restricted access roads or very long estate driveways.

This does not make any sense - are you arguing that a driveway ceases to be a driveway if it is over a certain length? Why only these three driveways mapped as roads and no others in the neighborhood? Many other homes in the area have a significant setback from the highway, as this is a rural area, and most people have a few fields or a pasture. None of these driveways are paved. All are one lane. They are clearly driveways and not roads.

Also, directly across the road from my mother’s home is a school with a curved driveway, which is not marked as a road. The inconsistency of this requirement seems to invalidate it.

If there is a standard requiring any drive over a certain length or all driveways to be labeled as roads, I think the signal-to-noise ratio of usable map information will be awful.