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Traffic Studied Using Computer-Linked Cars
mprindle writes "Yahoo News has an AP article about a system that links individual cars to analyze traffic patterns, which allows the drivers to avoid traffic jams and accidents. This system is part of the 'smart highway' initiatives. The data from the car is sent to a central server and from that data traffic patterns in a 40 mile radius. According to the article this technology is less expensive than using poll mounted antennas or ground sensors."
From the summary:
Another fine proofreading job, Zonk.
--
Go ahead...mod me down...you know you want to.
From FTA: Acura's 2005 RL features a navigation system that provides real-time traffic updates for 20 major cities; information is transmitted to the cars via XM radio satellites. Traffic data is aggregated from local police, transportation departments and other sources. The big question: How much are people willing to spend to avoid sitting in traffic? List figures 10 to 15 percent of drivers in a given area would need to participate to make the system effective. The devices bought separately cost about $1,000.
lmao. the poster has been online too long... I believe what he was looking for was a pole mounted sensor... Its funny how what you do everyday becomes evidenced in the misspellings you cause. Go with that where you will.
Gravity Sucks
will this alert me when my wife's car in the vicinity, when my ... um ... "colleague" ... is with me in the backseat ...
If EVERYONE has a computer in their car to help them avoid traffic jams, then it would be absolutely pointless. The traffic would become more widely distributed, sure, but it'd shift away from highways that are designed to hold traffic, and into residential areas that aren't. You're going to have traffic somewhere, so whether it's on the highway or on another road is immaterial. Thus, these computers are pointless for anything more than data-gathering.
They'll tout the lower the cost of the 'system' so they can easier monitor our location, driving habits and speed. When in reality, they are artificially lowering the cost of the system just for those benifits.
*takes off tinfoil cap*
Doubt it'll ever happen in my lifetime (with all the whisle blowers and such out there) but still.
But how long until we can get some level of computer-controlled vehicles? Once the technology has matured a bit, I'd MUCH rather trust a reasonably engineered computerized system than the thousands of other drivers around me on my way about town. Not that I shouldn't be able to turn it off, but I think the concept would really grow once we switched the carpool lane to the auto-drive lane, and manual drivers learn to stay clear of the 80+mph traffic that flows on it.
Ryan Fenton
What if EVERYONE had cars like this? EVERY car is avoiding traffic jam A, and creates traffic jam B, which then creates traffic jam C, which was caused by people avoiding traffic jam B. To infinity, and beyond.
There are way too many people who get on a road even when traffic alerts suggest they take other routes. People who are already stuck in traffic have no real choice. But it doesn't end there. There is always people flooding out of the exits onto the highway even when it's jammed even when another route would have made things easy for everyone.
Then again, there is the problem of people just not paying attention to these traffic alerts. In which case, this study is totally pointless.
My two cents.
I find that in the cities where i've lived (San Diego, Atlanta), that even when the highways are gridlocked, there really aren't viable alternatives on surface streets. They're either too far off the route or they're also crowded. So even with a system like this, I don't know that the alternate routes would be that much better a solution, you're still spending close to the same amount of time on the road. It's either gridlocked on the highway or you're gridlocked on the city streets. Maybe better mass transit is the answer.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
You have to remember that there is such a thing as a traffic engineer. Most potental accident locations have alternate routes pre-plotted. The detours may take you on lower capacity roads, but if you have the ability to filter over a wider area you could overcome this problem by directing people to different alternates. This could really help in some cases.
How long until insurance companies synchronize some of those devices they are testing that memorize your driving habits to some kind of wireless network? Although big brother would be watching, insurance monies would go to your pocket via safe driver discounts and analysis of vehicles' behavior right before accidents.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
But what if your car is stopped in the breakdown lane because of a flat tire or something? If you are the only wired car (from the relatively small pool) on that road at that time, will the system simply think that the road is at a standstill and tell everybody else to avoid that particular road?
Stupid Drivers
According to Anthony Downs any loss of congestion from Mass Transit is quickly eaten by by triple converance. The problem is that we live to far away from where we work and at low density and that is hard to fix. http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/stillstuckint raffic.htm
It's funny how we spend so much time on alleviating traffic concerns, when it would be simpler to just abandon the car. It's to the point where it's often twice as fast and cheap to use public transport. When I'm in a large city, I park my car at a terminal, hop the train, and go. Not only do I not have to worry about traffic and the associated stress, I also buy back all the time I'd waste behind the wheel to catch up on reading and paperwork. And while using public transport can sometimes mean walking a block or two, it's no worse than finding a parking spot. Really, why, in North America, are we so fixated on the automobile for personal transport?
Be relentless!
No mention of the cell tracking method someone demo'ed a couple years ago? It used data from cell towers to monitor anonymized speed data for cell phones for a certain service, as measured by 2d direction finding the various towers could perform on a phone based on signal strength.
The method, while it generated controversy on slashdot for the possible privacy implications, was a viable and cheap method to get this same data without adding specific new hardware.
just what we need flocking cars and unstable systems going into loops. I will stick with driving myself if I want automation I will ride the train.
Tin foil is what they want! Try this instead!
Some of the previous post write this type of tech off without considering it could be used as one part of the solution. The only way to improve traffic is a system that effectively intergrates several options. One option, let's say mass transit, cannot do it alone.
Imagin if you could tie this system into traffic signals. The combination of routing a certain set of vehicles to alternate routes along with changing the timing of lights on several routes could ease congestion in many cases. Most of the gridlock I see is not caused my a major accident but small incidents. Add an effecient system that deals with moving hazards off the road quickly,something like what they have on the autobahn we probably see huge back ups reduced. There will always be some gridlock but that does not mean a system has failed.
Your car breaks down in the road (not a safe place to be) and your system alert other drivers to avoid that lane. I would be thankful. So would the other drivers.
haha, it took me a minute to get your joke because this is slashdot- not some dumbass Deja board where super stud jock boys like yourself usually troll.
clearly you're not a nerd or geek and don't belong here.
a real nerd, assuming a wife could be had, would never risk losing the one sure source of sex in his life.
now, if "colleague" is your pet name for your hand, that would be funny.
Excuse me, but what is a "poll antenna"?
Yeah, it sounds like a good idea now, but think about the privacy issues. If they can track where I am, where I'm going, and how fast, what's to stop a ticket for showing up in my mailbox everytime I go 1 mph over the speed limit? How long until some creep hacks the system and has access to everything he knows to stalk whoever he wants and do all kinds of no good? I don't want radio transmitters in my clothes, I don't want my cell phone to track me, and I don't want my car disclosing my personal information.
Stopping traffic accidents in 3 easy steps:
1) Don't run red lights or stop signs.
2) Stay within +-5 miles per hour of the designated speed limit, and don't tailgate someone for going said speed limit.
3) Use your fucking turn signal when you change lanes or make turns, and don't cut people off.
There, I have solved this decades-old problem in only one minute without spending thousands of dollars on technology that asshole-drivers won't use anyway. Then again, asshole-drivers won't really listen to this advice either.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Click here to read it. Same story.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What I want is a website that sneaks GPS units onto police cars so we can find out where all the best donut shops are. At least then when I am sitting in traffic I have a dozen artery-clogging donuts to keep me busy.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
According to the article this technology is less expensive than using poll mounted antennas or ground sensors
Poll: Mounted antennas or ground sensors. You decide!
[ ] Mounted Antennas
[ ] Ground Sensors
I guess newspapers should stop checking the spelling of their articles too?
n/t
using poll mounted antennas or ground sensors
...............Oh wait..... Now I get it. It's supposed to be POLE and not POLL.... My bad.
For a second, I thought the article talked about polling the data rather than having the sensor device interrupt when data was available....
If the system becomes popular enough, they'll have to switch to DMA mounted antennas and ground sensors to handle the data throughput...
This seems to be a short-term solution to a problem that needs to be solved in the long-term.
Wouldn't it be more effective to simply improve the roads on which we drive, and perhaps shoot some city planners (with non-lethal weapons of course).
I remember watching a show on discovery channel about a massive city that they are building within a city in Japan or China or something. It fixes the problem of traffic by allowing people to live where they work. A bit communist, but whatever.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the non-lethal weapons would be loaded with lethal ammunition.
I am guessing they don't come preequipped with wings to fly around traffic eh?
General Motors has been doing all sorts of experiments with cars that are driven by computer. They've shown some experiments on television where about eight or ten cars are driving eighty miles per hour on a road at "tailgating" distance from one another.
The idea is not that computers are better at driving than humans, but is a solution to the problem that the driver of each vehicle sees only those cars that are immediately around him on the road. This means that if the vehicle in front of him is stopped, he must stop, too. Imagine a stoplight at an intersection. The light turns green, but you're behind ten cars, so by the time you start going, the light turns yellow again. Why? This is happening because you can't go until the car immediately in front of you goes, and the driver of that car suffers from the same problem. What if all the drivers communicated, so that when the light turns green, everybody would push the gas at exactly the same time? And more specifically, if everybody pushed the gas exactly the right amount so as to accelerate at exactly the same rate? Many more cars would make it through the intersection before the light turns red. Also, we'd all get where we're going a lot faster. That is currently impossible because there is no "central command", no way to create an overall driving strategy for everyone on a given road. Everybody does what he believes is best, and this causes all sorts of bottlenecks that shouldn't otherwise exist.
A system that would essentially control all the vehicles on a road would do exactly that, and more. Now, I imagine that at first, this will only be available on a select few roads as an "experiment", and only people whose cars have the internal components to steer and control themselves at the instruction of external computers will be able to participate. I think the system would work by providing central control locations on a sort of grid, where each section of road has its own control system, and as cars leave one section of road and enter another, their information would be passed on to the next computer down the grid. Also, each vehicle would have to contain the additional sensors to "close the loop", essentially by providing an internal control inside the vehicle that would allow it to slow down or come to a stop in case there is something in the road that the central computer doesn't know about, or some other condition arises.
This system would have tremendous benefits:
Look, it's not like driving down the road is some act of privacy. You have a big metal idenfication number attached to your vechile at all times, and that's tied into a wonderful database containing your name, home address, past driving / conviction record which can be used by BOTH private AND police personnel.
I appreciate that your desire for privacy, but if you want real privacy, use the bus. No identification required, and the license plate doesn't single you out.
>Another fine proofreading job, Zonk.
Their jobs should be outsourced to some dilligent people with (at least intermediate) English skills - for example some freelancers in India or the Phils.
Job Requirements:
- Low-intermediate English skills
- Owns a computer system with Internet access
Perhaps Slashdot editor position doesn't pay well, but I'm sure thousands would to do a great editing job for two-three hundred bucks a month.
Don't be planning too far ahead.
0 05/04/08/BUGA4C50P61.DTL/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.peakoil.net/
http://www.peakoil.org/
http://www.peakoil.com/
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2
Do a lot of reading, make up your own mind.
Cory Doctorow's recent novel Eastern Standard Tribe (see http://www.craphound.com/est/) talks about similar-sounding peer-to-peer networks among automobiles, where among other things cars on the system can share or request local traffic information among one another. One of the interesting background ideas in the story is the development of toll system for peer-to-peer music sharing along the highways.
Is anyone aware of any other books or short stories that included or discussed applying this or other sorts of technology to optimize utilization of transportation systems?
I've been interested in this idea for a long time, and especially now since I find myself fighting DC traffic every day on the way from Virginia to Capitol Hill....
Check out: http://www.logicacmg.com/pressroom/press_releases/ press_releases.asp?display=detail&id=1161
sigs are for nerds
Insurance rates are already based on extensive statistics of accidents and costs. The insurance company wants the income to equal the expenses plus X% profit margin. (Where X can't be sky-high because there still is some competition there.)
And that's where the statistics come in.
E.g., cars that look sportsy will have a higher accident rate than something that looks like a Peugeot 106 or VW Lupo or Ford Fiesta. Because every college kid trying to impress college girls (and some mid-life crisis men for the same reason) will buy one of those and drive like a fucktard.
Unfortunately, this also illustrates another problem: like any statistics that don't include _your_ driving style, you're penalized for stuff outside your control.
So basically there are classes of cars where you're penalized not for the car's being itself unsafe or actually a race car (hence needing better reflexes at its top speed) or anything, but because it looks cool enough to be bought by retards.
So personally I see nothing wrong with taking individual skill into account. If I bought a cool looking car and drive it only in town and only at or below the speed limit, I wouldn't mind paying less insurance than the fucktards with an added wing and 4" exhaust (even seen one on a 1.1 litre engine car) and try to look cool by driving like a public menace.
Of course, you are right, that does mean that the ones who aren't in the safe driving group will pay more, because they _are_ in a group that produces more accidents. And as I've said, the insurance company wants to get back the money it pays on those accidents.
But I wouldn't mind those getting some feedback, in the form of "ok, if you want to drive like a fucktard, you'll pay more because your kind of driver produces more accidents."
Yes, everyone thinks they're god's gift to the highway, the perfect driver, and that accidents only happen to other people. Even the ex-coleague who drove fast enough through town on rain to aquaplane (god knows what kind of speed that means, 'cause the speed limit isn't enough for that) and smash into a tree, thought he's the perfect driver. He spent a year in hospital and still didn't get the idea that maybe something's wrong with his driving.
In practice they aren't really safe drivers, nd they endanger everyone else too.
There _is_ a reason why speed limits are what they are. Because kinetic energy is proportional to the SQUARE of the the speed, while energy dissipated by braking is linear with the braking distance. Hence a car doing 70 km/h brakes in _twice_ the distance of one doing 50 km/h. Heck, at the point where the 50 km/h car fully stopped, the 70 km/h one is still doing 50 km/h.
Even if one can master the car at higher speeds in ideal driving situations, it's still unsafe. When some kid runs in front of your headlights, or some car goes out of parking right in front of you, the macho driven car at high speed will kill or maim while the safe driven one might actually stop.
So I wouldn't mind those getting hit in the wallet for being a menace.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
One reason for traffic lights is that they split the traffic up into smaller chunks.
If all the cars set off at the same time, and more cars got through, then the people who set the traffic light timings would shorten them so returning to the original chunk size.
When traffic engineers want to keep traffic flowing at a point they put in roundabouts, clover leafs and flyovers/tunnels.
threadeds blog
...when all cars are computerized and manual driving is no longer allowed except on special private courses. Then all those arrogant morons who think they're the worlds greatest drivers (even while eating or on their cell phones) will have to sit back and let the computer do the driving for them, fuming all the while over the fact they no longer get to endanger everyone else on the road with their stupidity.
As for me, I'll be sitting back, drinking my coffee, and reading a good book while the car merrily zips to my destination. And laughing every time I think about these little twits having an infarction over the fact that they don't get to impress us with their 'leet' driving skills anymore.
Yes, those will indeed be good times.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Is the English of that article painfully jolting to any one else? I couldn't finish it.
I call shenanigans! Everyone knows that slashdotters don't have wives.
What are you doing with your colleague in the back seat? Board games?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
maybe google has a solution for us?
The whole "waah, but they suck me dry with tickets" complaint starts from the false premise that the mean police/government/whatever just taxes you, and there's nothing you can possibly do to avoid that. Well, false: you can stop speeding already, and you'll get no more tickets. It's that simple.
Frankly, I don't think endangering others is some sacred right. Cars can and do kill or cripple. More people die or end up crippled in a year, _any_ year, than in all aircraft-related accidents combined, _including_ the 9/11. That's why all those laws are there in the first place.
And the real issue isn't even getting home faster, which usually isn't even the achieved result. The issue is: thanks to the ads of the car industry some decades ago, the artifficial image was created that powerful cars are some supremely manly thing. That driving anything less than a 200 HP gas-guzzler, and/or god forbid actually driving it carefully or at the speed limit, is akin to wearing an "I have a small dick" banner.
And if they only endangered themselves, I wouldn't even have anything against it. I always said that more people should be encouraged to nominate themselves for the Darwin Awards.But unfortunately these people don't only endanger themselves, they also endanger everyone else on the road.
And I'll be damned if I see anything wrong with sucking them dry. Stuff them with tickets until they finally get it in their head that yes, they too are supposed to obey the speed limit. I'll drink to that.
Or here's a better idea that doesn't even involve turning it into a revenue source: death penalty. No, I'm not kidding. If you get involved in _any_ accident, including "but he just appeared in front of me", and you were over the speed limit, you get to swing by the neck to death. No ifs, no buts, no atenuating circumstances.
Because that's just the kind of thing that the speed limit is there to prevent. The issue isn't what you can do with the car in ideal conditions. The issue is when someone backed out of a parking lot in front of you, or some kid jumped in front of your headlights, or the car in front has to brake, or whatever. _Then_ it starts to matter that braking distance increases with the square of the speed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
A public mass transit system which is fully computer controlled and which avoids virtually all of the fundamental problems of existing mass transit systems.
There's a slightly differently engineered American system which does the same thing:
http://www.skywebexpress.com/
And an overview of the underlying concept beneath both technologies.
http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/
Deleted
Being a labrat for this study I can describe exactly how the program works. Theres three pieces, your pocket pc, your modem, and your gps receiver. To get it to work you must turn on the products in this order, -Turn on GPS -Put Modem in Pocket Pc -Turn on pocket pc -Connect to the network -Start the nav program If you don't do this rain dance in front of your palm pc it will not work. It is very picky about how it wants to work, and is NOT open to interpretation. Furthermore this program is obviously in beta testing there are a lot of issues that occur, such as randomly losing all the data on the flash card that holds the programs for the study, or not being able to connect to the network. Personally one thing I've learned about this program is how unstable Windows CE really is. Now to the day to day operations of the program It has voice directions that tells you where to go to avoid traffic, although since its going though small speakers its not very loud, and if people listen to music the way I do you'll never hear it. Also since its using mapquest type directions sometimes it gives you directions that make no sense, like to get to my house to the highway it gives me a dozen turns, when I know that i can get to the highway in one turn and 10 minutes faster. I have seen it work however, on my way to school it will direct me around the huge wall of traffic that occurs everyday at one stoplight. Overall I'm not a huge fan of any technology that uses gps to know exactly where you are. I'm partaking since it is a fun study and its free. Once the study's over I'll most likely never use it again and put my unit up on ebay. But for people on a long trip or for people who live in an area that has traffic problems (Albany NY DOES NOT have traffic problems despite what the article said) I could see this being useful.
It will require unusually careful target marketing.
"Lexus traffic nav -- for the special people."
"Focus Flight -- the practical choice"
"SAAB Nav -- the intelligent solution."
"Hummer -- 'We don't go around anybody -- we go _through_ everybody"
As long as it is understood that each driver is special in his own little way and isn't actually doing something commie like cooperating as such.
Options are always good. I would guess that part of the reason your rush hour traffic is so uncongested is because some of the people in your area do take the train to work. I'm sure a large portion of them find it cheaper, or don't own cars. Another set probably finds the additional delay a convenient tradeoff for not having to drive-- ie, they get time to read, etc...
But without that train, all those people would have to get where they're going somehow, and it will either be in a car, or in a bus that's even slower than the train that stops every 400 yards to block the road while it loads and unloads.
And yes, that train is slow. I've taken it from the airport to a couple of places when I was in town, and MAN does it creep along.
There are traffic models! for enviroment developement.
There are some fundamental design flaws with conventional mass transit which the car basically just about gets round. It's to do with the difference between an individual transport vehicle and a group transport vehicle.
All of the conventional mass transit systems are group transport vehicles. The car is an individual transport vehicle and this means there is simply no way that the car can be replaced by any of the existing conventional public transport systems.
More details on why here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/A3896409
Your statement that it's twice as fast and cheap to use conventional public transpor is only true in a *very* limited set of circumstances which are not valid (and *cannot* be valid) for the majority of the population.
A) You have to start or live near a station.
B) Your destination must also be near a station.
C) The train must have a very frequent schedule.
D) The train must be an express or limited stop train.
If these circumstances are not true you then have to:
A) Walk or travel to the station, increasing journey time.
B) Walk or travel to your final destination or indeed *make additional journeys*, all of which increase the journey time.
C) Wait for the train to arrive on schedule, increasing the journey time.
D) The vehicle *must* stop to let people on and off, this *drastically* reduces the average speed and increases drastically the journey time. You can only increase the average speed by denying people access to the vehicle (an express). In a group vehicle, speed and therefore journey time is a tradeoff between performance and access.
Because these circumstances are rarely true and indeed *cannot* be true for the majority of the population the performance of conventional public transport is always and must always be poor and the overwhelming majority of journeys are and will continue to be made by the car. The only thing which will change this is a mass transit system which is based on *individual vehicles* rather than group vehicles with their absolutely fundamental limitations.
Deleted
We have not built a new road in Portland Oregon in 20 freaking years. You cant avoid trouble spots, period. We do have local and federally funded light rail at a cost of $100 million per mile tho. That works great for the 1% of the population close to the line.....
I can bike that 12 miles in an hour. Faster than your light rail.
IF light rail would just put a personal alarm in your seat you could have it wake you just before your stop and take a nap. Then you would not loose those ~3 hours you spend on the train. At least for me worries about missing my stop (an uncomfortable seats) always preventing me from sleeping on the bus. If I could sleep on the bus, and didn't have transfers I could deal with long travel times.
Another really neat company working on intelligent transportation systems is Zoom Information Systems(http://www.zoominfosystems.com). They have already gotten out a working prototype that uses the built in sensors in cars, and have partnered up to Boeing (http://www.zoominfosystems.com/news_details.asp?I D=9). Just imagine a system that notifies the street department about potholes and car accidents without human intervention. Its great technology.
I agree that rubber necking to look at the accident is wrong. However when there is an accident in the next lane you should be creeping around it! Emergency works will be WALKING on the road right next to you, and they will need to move things into your lane temporarily. Sure in theory you could speed by at 65mph (though congestion because a lane is blocked means you can't anyway), but it is unsafe for them!
Even if the accident is on the other side of the median you need to slow down! Emergency vehicles will be doing U-turns in front of you to get to/from the accident in a hurry. You need to go slower so you can react to them.
You are preaching to the choir. Traffic engineers know how to design a road correctly. politicians then review the design and force them to put in all those unsafe features to "save the neighborhood", or other such things.
People like me who get carsick won't call it good. Better than driving myself, but still not good. If I'm not looking out the window I soon get sick. On a bad day I can barely open a map before I get sick.
If *everyone* has these computers in their car, and intelligently works to avoid traffic jams, it might not follow that all traffic flows smoothly. It seems to me we might have a stock market effect, where the system becomes thoroughly chaotic because everyone is trying to intelligently game the system to their own advantage.
My guess is you will get weird anomalous artifacts as the algorithm everyone is using routes too many people the same wrong way. Then when that glitch is fixed, it results in another glitch somewhere else...
Isn't that what centuries of stock market history have shown?
-Don't use a cell phone while driving.
-Don't drink and drive.
-Don't carry other people in the car with you, who will talk and distract you just like the above two examples.
-Don't drive a car that has any chance of randomly breaking down and going out of control.
With each of these new points, we come that much closer to resolving the accidents problem, but we will never reach perfection.
I speak as someone who can't afford a new car, and who almost had an accident a couple weeks ago when my wife chose to start another bitchfest at an inopportune moment. There are always more problems where you don't expect them.
heh.
Gravity Sucks