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Using Cell Devices To Monitor Traffic Flow
MxTxL writes "MSNBC is running a fairly nifty story here about how a few telco companies are thinking of using cell phone, pager and GPS signals and even the toll-payer transponders to analyze traffic patterns and give operators better abilities to route traffic around congestion. The article even mentions a few privacy issues and talks a little bit on how the GPS units in cars could be alerted to warn the driver about upcoming congestion and suggest an alternative route. "
..."Information Superhighway"
Hey, it's a highway with a ton of information on it. Better go over to one with more free bandwidth...
Houston's Real Time Traffic Map puts [!] on the map wherever an incident has occurred. It opens up a pop-up window with info on traffic issues. Currently there's a "Car-B-Q" (car on fire) on 59 that's blocking a lane. You can also view the traffic via the highway camera's
We've had them for a while, so it's not distracting.
I seriously doubt any local police departments are going to suddenly "discover" that a long, flat, straight road in their jurisdiction is frequently driven at (speed_limit + 20) MPH. As long as the device used in tracking remains anonymous, the results will be academic.
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
This sig intentionally left blank.
Good Greif, people!
"GPS" is a system whereby a radio *reciever (Repeat, it is a RECIEVER, not a transmitter) can decipher one-way transmissions from orbiting satelites in order to allow it to calculate it's position.
Each satelite (And by satelite i mean a big chunk of equipment up in the sky) constantly broadcasts it's position in the sky and the current atomic time. The GPS unit uses this data to perform some math, allowing it to figure out where it is in relation to the satelites.
NONE of this, alone, allows anyone, anywhere, to figure out where you are.
The Acme rental cars are equipped with both a GPS reciever and a tracking device. It's possible for a tracking device to transmit it's GPS coordinates, but not necesary. It does make things easier, admitedly.
Without the tracking device, a car rental company could just as easily use the logs from the navigation system to figure out how fast you were driving. No tracking device needed. It is incredibly poor customer relations, however, and i think hartford will soon have one less car rental agency.
I haven't read the FCC thing, but i sorta doubt that cell phones will be equipped with full blown GPS recievers. Equipping them with enough brains to allow them to triangulate their position relative to the nearest cell stations would be far easier. you don't need GPS for this, but if it can be tweaked to emit WGS-84 coordinates, it sure will make you easier to find by anyone with a GPS reciever.
Basically, you'd need to know the coordinates of the cell stations. I think most cell phones already know how far they are from each passing cell station, just a little more math and a little added software.
I think the political importance of outrage over this sort of thing is hugely disserviced by the ammount of idiotic uninformed ranting going on. Get your facts straight or shut up.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Correction, they really only transmit atomic time, and other gobbletygook, making them simpler than i'd thought. www.trimble.com has a pretty good explanation of how GPS works.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I heard that Motorola was looking at this kind of service back in the early '90s. And I never heard any more about it. Wonder whether they discovered something that made further development not worth pursuing. Wonder whether these companies will rediscover the same thing. On the other hand, these people pushing this now might be former Motorola employees who decided to take the idea and run with it after their former, short-sighted employer dropped it. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Geez traffic looks rather light in New York today.
-cpd
>Electronic toll boxes in Illinois are specifically banned from using toll payment times to track down speeders. Otherwise no one would use them, and it was apparently more important to ease congestion by cutting down on tollway backups than it was to catch speeders.
No, that is to prevent the state from having to jail every man, woman and child in Chicago. For the ones who haven't been there, the speed limit is 55mph or less and the average speed is 85mph on 355, 78mph on the Tri-state and speed of light on 88 and 90.
Not that people drive slower on the other,non-toll expressways.
Ever so much as USED GPS in a car? It cuts out all the time, especially in large cities and depending on where you are geographically (never mind the quality of the equipment you're using). I've done a few experiments, and it sometimes takes quite awhile for the GPS unit to start up and get a lock - and maintaining a signal on 3 or more satellites is difficult. GPS isn't all that accurate either!
And this isn't getting into what someone who wanted to fsck with the system could do. Civilian, consumer level, ground-based GPS is not as robust as you might think.
..don't panic
My first thought was that most people living in the projects of your nearby large-city wouldn't have such snazzy GPS systems. Thus, everytime you wanted to take the interstate into downtown, the computer/cellphone/whatever would beep and tell you to take Martin Luther King Blvd under the bridge because it'd think there were fewer cars down that way.
:)
That reminds me about the wonderful directions MapQuest once gave me that took me to the middle of the projects in Atlanta, when I wanted to get to Emory University. Trying to get out of the projects in an unfamiliar city at 4am with 3 geeks in a pretty green saturn isn't exactly my idea of fun (well, it's funny now, but wasn't while it was happening!
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
*sigh*... instead of highlighting the real interesting issue they focuussed into the glitzy geek angle to this story. What should have been the big issue in this story is that ALL cell phones made after sometime later this year must have GPS tracking support. As stated, this is so 911 can more easily track calls and save lives. However, these intrusions can easily get out of control without proper limitations.
You might also be a bit concerned to know that many (test system) cars already have on board tracking devices that track what type of driver you are, how often you drive, average length of a trip, mileage, miles/km per hour that you drive. It's only a matter of time and legislation before everything is in place so you can't break traffic laws.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
They were tracking you full time before, but only at a cel-granular level. How do you think the call gets to your phone? If you leave it on for roaming, it's fairly straight forward for a hacker to track you as you be-bop around the city. With the 911 stuff, it's simply possible to say you're in Joe's House of Live Goat Porn rather than you're just in the crack whore district of the city.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
old style pagers I belive was more of just a general broadcast. This includes alphanumeric pagers as well as plain old numeric ones. If the pager can broadcast a return message, it could be used for tracking. I don't know if they're used that way or not though. I would expect them to use a modified cellular telephone protocol but I haven't looked into that technology all that much.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I should first say that I'm totally in favor of this and think it's a really cool idea.
However, I can already hear the privacy advocates screaming "big brother". People freaked out about serial numbers embedded in processors, after all -- can you really imagine that nobody's going to complain about companies implementing technology to track them wherever they go?
I hope not, but this just seems like exactly the sort of thing privacy nuts latch on to.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
There's a small red button at the top right of most model Nokia and Motorola phones that allows you to opt out of being tracked while you drive. Theres' no way you can be tracked, or issued a speeding ticket based on that data if you use it!
- ----------
Just place your cell phone on the passenger seat and press the red button that says 'Power'.
---------------------------------------
this information would help operators "route" traffic around trouble spots. If an accident happens on a suburban street, it's possible. About a week ago we had a tar truck overturn on the D.C. beltway that completely closed all lanes in one direction. Where the hell are they going to send all of that traffic? Last I checked there wasn't a whole lot of unused 5 line highways in the area. Hell, during rush hour every flat surface is choked with cars. In addition, the idea that a message on a sign board is going to keep traffic flowing (left lane closed ahead) is laughable. Anyone who's driven in an urban area lately that the simple act of a cop pulling someone over for a ticket can and will cause a traffic jam.
We already have real time traffic data in many cities - example San Diego.
Granted, this will supply more data, but I can't see how its going to help congestion much. It's just going to provide more proof that you can't get from point a to point b during rush hour.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Amusing possibilities for abuse involve getting a couple of mates to draw the registration number of someone you don't like on pieces of paper, and arrange to flash them at the cameras at either end of the monitored stretch within seconds of each other.
Cue automated speeding ticket for travelling in excess of Mach 4
The difference is this:
When I'm in a cell, I'm within a broad area. If they want me, they have to triangulate to get me.
If I have a cell phone with e911 imposed on it, the GPS will pinpoint my location much more accurately.
I'm already considering abandoning the phone. I wish those inkjet-printed paper phones would hurry up and get here.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Do you know if this sort of tracking is being implemented with pagers?
Old-style pagers, new-style two way pagers?
I'd think about getting a pager module for my handspring if I thought it would keep me from being tracked, or keep me tracked only at a cell-granular level rather than a specific level.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
I meant to add this URL also.
e s/ 1999/nrwl9040.html
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Wireless/News_Releas
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Driver (picks up cell phone and tries to deciffer message on tiny display)
Car: CCRRRRRRAAAAASSSSHHHHHHHH!!!
There's a traffic congestion 300 meters in front of you, thank you for using AT&T
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Works like a charm, too...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
However, a founding principle of our country is that sometimes personal liberty and rights take precedence over enforcement of the law. Some otherwise open-and-shut criminal convictions for much more serious offenses have been overturned as part of a system that attempts (and sometimes fails) to maximize the protection of both the accused and the victims.
That telcos are considering pitching in and helping civil engineers (sorry, had to contain a laugh at the thought of PACBELL trying to assist the Cal DMV) may seem nobel, but these engineers know about these problems, have known about these problems for years. Doing anything about them is nearly the impossible. When it does change, traffic patterns usally change sooner and the problem has moved on to a new venue. Probably good info if anyone is considering updating the Sims with it tho.
Where's that flying car, eh?
Best Plan: go find a park or a bar and camp out for a while, if you're on your way to work then blame it on traffic!
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"give operators better abilities to route traffic around congestion." That's a lie. It's going to be sold to marketing agencies for better billboard placement/pricing. Like Nelson ratings but what rode the commuters are using rather than what channel the viewers are watching.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
Actually, over here in Europe the trucks have a manadatory tour-recording device which tracks the speed of the truck. This record can be used to prove that the driver was speeding, even though it's main use is to track the mandatory rests of the driver.
On top of this there exist systems which track the behaviour of the driver and rate his/her performance (I'm not going to advertise further as I work for a company which provides such solutions). It is of course a very small step from this to linking the GPS information and automatically deducting the speeding tickets from the driver's paycheck.
And yes, the automatic camera systems are in use at least in Finland and elsewhere in Europe, the law does however require that the driver is identified from the picture so it is not too difficult to fool that system if you want to.
This is the first and foremost reason why we need open standards on things like cell phones. If the companies that built these little gadgets that are supposed to do so much allowed the consumers to have their own personal say in what they WANT them to do, each person could define their service based on their needs, and could even program the devices (or hire the local geek) to do it their way.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
I watched a show a few months ago about technology and how it relates to new cars and auto development and the like. There was a quick discussion of Tokyo's (I think) traffic monitoring system:
Basically there are hundreds (thousands?) of cameras around Tokyo that all feed to a central monitoring office. That office is staffed by several people whose whole job is to watch the TV's and update their systems on where congestion is occurring. These "systems" then send the data to cell towers/satellites for transmission to all "wired" cars. The drivers of these cars can pull up traffic reports instantly; recalculate their route based on baselines of traffic-flow, speed limits and traffic lights on other possible routes; and get instant ETA's based on any of those recommended alt routes.
Obviously the system is interactive with GPS and even cell signal triangulation in order to get these route updates.
Yummy Japan.
They're already "tracking" you. Your phone (when on) reports to the system where it is. The system tracks your phone's ID through the various cells. If they didn't, they'd have to broadcast an incoming call request to every cell on the system in order to get it through to you.
What this is suggesting, it seems, is using information about the rate at which IDs move from cell to cell in order to describe traffic patterns. Seems like a useful application of existing collateral information.
Police already know how many people are speeding: over 90%.
They also know how many people they can stop for speeding and make it pay for the time and effort: 15%.
So they set their radar guns for the speed at which the top 15% of cars will be going, and wait.
No need for tracking technology there. Just put a cop out in traffic and he'll find someone to nail within minutes. He wouldn't even need a radar gun. Most speeders are oblivious to what's going on behind them anyway. The gun just reduces the mean-time-to-collar, increasing the gross margin on the operation.
The question is, if 90% of us are "breaking" the law, are we wrong or is the law? And why don't we raise the speed limits a few mph so only 15% of us are breaking the law*?
--Blair
* - in some states, the standard for setting a speed limit on a street is to estimate the 85-percentile speed. But those estimates are based on old evidence, and somewhat derated due to revenue-generating motives.
1. That advertisement has a very chilling lesson for us all:
... by lowering the speed in that new ad to 0 mph. No more children will die in traffic mishaps due to speed. Problem solved.
Teach kids to stay out of the street.
If your kids are too small to learn or too stupid to obey, where the fuck are you and what are you doing that they can get into the street?
2. Speed is situational. If you're in a place where there are kids playing in or near the street, or where your view is obstructed and there might be kids there, then 30 mph is a good 10-30 mph higher than a prudent driver will drive anyway.
3. A car doing 30 brakes to a stop 3 feet farther than a car doing 29. You could save a kid by lowering the speed in that ad to 29 mph. A car doing 29 brakes to a stop 2.9 feet farther than a car doing 28. You could save a kid by lowering the speed in that new ad to 28 mph. A car doing 28 brakes to a stop 2.8 feet farther than a car doing 27 mph. You could save a kid by lowering the speed in that new ad to 27. A car
4. In the U.S., residential zones almost universally limit speed to 25. In some places that's an "absolute maximum speed limit" regardless of whether it's posted or not (see speed is situational above). Who are these limeys who are so hateful of children that they would add 5 mph to the reasonable and prudent speed in their neighborhoods?
--Blair
"Cavitate cheek. Insert tongue as necessary."
It's better than the 15% who currently "obey" the law, and area actually the dumbest of all, because impeding the flow of traffic causes more accidents than speeding does.
Speeding doesn't tend to cause accidents anyway. Studies surrounding the institution and repeal of the double-nickel have proved that increasing speed reduces accident frequency. But it increases the fatality rate, absolutely and per-accident.
That's why you don't get to go 95 on the freeway. Not because you'll cause an accident, but because you're likely to be dead if you cause almost any accident at all. And if you're dead, you can't push your car to the side of the road, and it stops traffic for hours, and ties up homicide detectives and the coroner and the Accident Scene Sanitation Service and all sorts of NHTSA employees. Better you should live a cripple and keep the full legal responsibility for the paperwork to yourself.
> Sorry.
And naive.
--Blair
I assume you have a URL for a study that we can all peruse :) Or am I expecting too much from a slashdot reader.
You want google, you know where to find it.
I got the info in traffic school. I typically get nailed by this overweaning legislation once every 30 months or so. Just the right frequency to qualify to pay the hundred-dollar extortion for whatever info they consider current that year, to keep the points off my license and avoid the arbitrary $500 increase in the illegal tax they call "mandatory insurance".
Until next time, I'm sticking to "Studies show that speeding doesn't cause accidents, it increases the fatality rate from a lower number of accidents."
--Blair
On city highways around Pittsburgh, PA (and probably elsewhere), I've seen what I'm told are traffic density radar units. Little polls with solar cells on them and white boxes. I could be wrong, but this is where our various local new services get their traffic report data. Why not just sign on a deal with cities already providing this service rather than invading our privacy?
Why bother.
Congress has already mandated airbags in cars. They costs thousands of dollars and kill more kids than school shootings. Congress has also mandated sophisticated oxygen and CO2 sensors be hooked up to your "engine warning light", and go off if your gascap is left loose.
If we can mandate all that, why can't we mandate what I will call "the transponder box". Imagine a burst-mode cell phone and GPS all wrapped up in an embedded black box and mass produced for every car in the country. Think of the traffic solutions we could impose:
- Instant end to speeding and aggressive lane changing. Every time you broke the speed limit you would be billed on a formula, such as (mph over * seconds over). Every time you made an agressive lane change (the system would know where the other cars were, to check your proximity) you would be fined and points assessed to your license.
We could even fine people for not zipper merging!
Today's sprawling traffic jams would be eliminated overnight. Anyone who has seen the results of traffic simulations by the NHRA knows that speeding and agressive lane changing combined with not leaving enough distance is the root cause of bumper to bumper traffic jams.
I'm not talking about an invasion of privacy - throw away everything but a meaningless box id # that only the state can correlate. I'm talking about an end to traffic deaths and that endless sea of brakelights and predatory drivers you swim through every morning.
Personally, it makes me drool.
Ok but to accomplish this they will have to be tracking you at all times. Right. Its interesting to see peoples reaction to this when its presented in cloaked way behind a story of how it will help society so you aren't late for work or whatever the advantages are.
***I GOT NUTHIN***
Someone posted the e911 link (www.fcc.gov/e911), what that does to telecom companies is that they will HAVE to be able to locate all of the cell-phone users who use their systems.
That means they -have- to invest in it (at least in Europe and in the US), so they're going to be coming up with a bunch of new services that use your location, to recoup on that investment.
So expect big companies to know where you are a lot of the time. You know, so they can serve you better....
-PYves
The nice thing here is that engineers can use data obtained from GPS to analyze traffic hot spots and design appropriate solutions to them without having to go to the site, set up cameras, observe traffic, etc. when determining the cause of the hot spot.
In addition, using GPS makes it easy to add traffic monitoring to other locations quickly, again without installing cameras, traffic counters, etc.
For example, in the '96 Olympics, Atlanta added several hundred cameras around the city's highways and streets to monitor traffic around the games. Shortly, cities that will be hosting the Olympics and other major events can get the GPS data feeds without the need to setup all that equipment.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Data such as the speed of the cars, what lanes they're in, etc, can all be used by accident invetigators to build a formal description of the incident and determine who was actually at fault, and whose insurance rates go up.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
This is quite revealing as to why traffic laws aren't uniformly enforced and why the general public has such contempt for them. Police officers are simply tax collectors and receive an amount of respect communsurate with that position from most motorists.
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Data for I-95, mile marker 88:
Average speed -- 70 mph
Lowest speed -- 46 mph
Highest speed -- 98 mph
So, even though it's anonymized, it's more than sufficient for a police officer to go out and clock someone speeding. Even though the speed data isn't used to directly issue the ticket (unlike a certain car rental company), it still provides critical information that leads to the ticket being issued. So it still could be used as a sort of defacto Big Brother system.
DJ: What's a trafficompu2000, Captain Bob?
Guy in Traffic Copter: Well it uses Cell Phone signals to track traffic -
DJ: Hey, aren't cell phones in moving vechicles illegal Captain?
Guy in Traffic Copter: Well, it sends them a ticket at the same time! The mayor has got this city running like a machine. Back to you, Rob.
YOU (to friend on phone): Damn!
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
cell : Warning, cell phone using driver in blue BMW swerving in and out of trafic on HY 19. User on HY 19 : Hey, that jerk the phone's talking about is in the same type of car I'm in.
It has already happened. Check out this story about a guy who got busted by his rental car agency when they tracked him with a GPS.
---
Hey man, can I bum a sig?
Looks like a self-modifying system -- person A uses phone to check traffic status, is told "all clear". Person A then smashes into person B because he wasn't paying attention to the f*cking road. Person C then checks traffic status and is told "Accident ahead." And so on. :)
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
In the UK, I believe they already have CCTV cameras on major motorways to read people's license plates, track their average speed and issue electronic tickets automatically. If people's cell phones are used to achieve this, not only the authorities won't have to spend a penny to catch people anymore, but the people themselves will pay for the cell phone and the service to get shafted !
Suddenly, I'm glad I drive a 30 year old car without On-Star, GPS or cell phone.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Bystander: "Cool art car!"
ClueStick Owner: "Dude, it's not an 'art car' it's a Farraday cage protecting my car from being tracked with a mounted trafficcamera-flashing laser system and highly reflective paint coatings on the license plates to reduce resolution..."
Bystander: "huh?"
ClueStick Owner: "Here's a tin foil hat. Have fun."
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer