Using Cellular Traffic to Monitor Traffic Jams

An Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has this story about Scots company Applied Generics and their plan to use cellphone location data to determine where there are traffic jams and (presumably) generate (and sell?) evasive routing tactics for drivers. They are using both passive cellular traffic (what you get when the phone is switched on) and active (drivers phoning up to say they'll be late - in standing traffic, I hope) to look for clusters of immobile cellphones along major routes. The whole idea has a sort of "why didn't I think of that?" neatness. Personally I wouldn't mind my own traffic being used wholesale (aggregated with thousands of other users), but how do other /.ers feel about a company profiting from data emitted by the cellphone that they paid for?"

Comments

Traffic jams because drivers check phones

[GilroyGarlic]

.. or something like that. LOL

whatever

[tzanger]

drivers phoning up to say they'll be late - in standing traffic, I hope

Blow it out yer ear. Just because you can't chew bubble gum and walk at the same time doesn't mean the rest of us should be hampered. If you can't drive without being distracted you shouldn't be driving, period.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[phil reed]

You need to track down and read Larry Niven's article Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation, which is in the collection All the Myriad Ways (now out of print). Among other things, he invented the idea of the flash crowd, which is typified these days by a site being slashdotted.