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Fucking GPS? Yep, accessing the internet once again to get all that sweet, sweet map data.

Or, in my case, accessing sigalert to see why traffic is suddenly so backed up.

Agreed. I've been known to "access the Internet" while driving slowly--I have a link on my home screen for sigalert which comes up with my commute route. But that's a bit different than "surfing the web."

The problem we are trying to optimize is: How can we move the most cars (maximize distance) in the least amount of time. i.e. dX/dT. Which looks like a differential equation.

One small but important nit-- you're not trying to move the most cars, but the most people.

It is a shame that the Dept. of Motor Vehicles doesn't know shit about standing waves nor teaches people how to help optimize keeping vehicles moving in the traffic flow. One of these days every car will be able to pass it's current speed both forward and backwards to its neighbor's car so that people 5, 10, 20 mins down the road can know about future traffic conditions. i.e. Peer-to-Peer Car Knowledge.

In LA they most certainly do. They can't make drivers drive better, but they instrument the hell out of the roads and there are a number of ways for drivers to get detailed real time information. The whole region's freeway system is instrumented and you can get near real time updates of freeway speeds at sigalert.com as well as most of the popular mapping apps. It even gives the dispatch reports from incidents so you know which lanes are blocked. I glance at sigalert and replan my route in an instant due to a collision 15 miles away. The city of LA also just completed integration of city street sensors and lights system wide, and it does work. You can get street speed data on google maps, and there are also crowdsourced apps like waze (which I don't use since it put me on a dead stopped 405) or trapster, that integrate realtime data from drivers on the road.

Some GPS units already have this feature in California. They get real-time traffic data from a Sigalert XM broadcast.

check out Sigalert.com

they have realtime traffic for Los Angeles, and some if you pay for the service you can look at the traffic cameras. IIRC the cameras arent there to reduce traffic, they are there to monitor traffic, not alter it.

Note: Some of these URLs are other cities too.

TANN
Sigalert.com
Metrocommute
MSN Autos
CHP Traffic Incident Info.
Caltrans Realtime Freeway Speed Map (Java)

Any more I missed for Los Angeles area? :)

See my list of good traffic map sites:

Traffic.tann.net/.
Sigalert.com.
Metrocommute.

This site has very good reports of traffic conditions all over California. They're very good but tend to lag by about 20 minutes.

We have the same thing on our freeways - a big network of radar and pavement detectors.

But they're not used to identify speeders and give tickets, just to provide information to drivers and law enforcement about road conditions (see www.sigalert.com).

On the other hand, Southern California freeways have more traffic than your typical woodsy trail. The lack of volume is a big challenge to anonymity.

When you create your account, you can configure your route on the freeways, and the times in which you travel. Sigalert will send an email to you during your specified travel times advising you of hazards along your route. They also claim to be WAP friendly so you can check with a wireless device (not having a WAP-enabled phone, I can't verify). I don't pay for the service, but I check their free real-time maps before leaving for my commute to work or to home.

I use something very similar. I live about 50 miles away from where I work (splits the difference for me and my gf).

What's really cool is that I can subscribe to this site, preprogram the different routes I can take to work and it will send me text messages whenever there is a major accident along the way, or when speeds drop below a set level. Additionally, I can access the site from my cellphone, and actually get an estimated time for my commute along the various routes, and take which ever one is shortest. It has saved me so much time, it's crazy.

(No, I'm not affiliated with sigalert.)

Sigalert.com will even page you with incidents along your route.