Thank you for the really thoughtfully laid out arguments here! I fully understand your approach in this scenario and agree with you that in this case track would certainly be more appropriate. Thank you for taking the time to add your individual points to clarify this situation.

Hi x58, Thank you for reaching out about this and contributing your local knowledge to the map! I was thinking that this road would be better classified as unclassified, as it looks like a through road providing access to two villages and has many more minor roads branching off of it. The OSM Wiki (highway=unclassified) mentions using unclassified “for roads used to connect other towns, villages or hamlets” and notes it’s considered the “lowest level of the interconnecting grid network”, which fits this scenario well.

I understand your concern about road surface quality, but the OSM Wiki (highway=*#Assumptions) also mentions that highway classifications "do not imply anything about road quality, only importance and intended main use.” To represent the poor road surface quality here and discourage routing, I’d recommend doing exactly what you’ve already done by adding smoothness and track type tags. If you believe this should also be restricted to 4x4 vehicles, I’d suggest adding a 4wd_only=yes tag as well. Let me know what you think!

Hi DP24PH, Thank you for reaching out about this. After further review, this does appear to be a more major bypass route than I originally thought, and I have now changed this back to primary.