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MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams
Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."
Does KD use Microsoft Spell-cheque?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Traffic James *IS* a dick.
I have a way to help stop traffic jams without fancy algorithms: stop tailgating the person in front of you. That way every time that person slows down slightly you don't have to slam on your brakes, thus requiring people behind you to slam on theirs causing a buildup of cars that aren't going anywhere even if traffic isn't that heavy.
I guess they decided to take phrases "computer crash" and "blue screen of death" seriously.
I could only imagine the program modifying GPS directions on the fly:
- Left turn ahead.
- Traffic ahead.
- Please turn right and over the railing
- Please fall 200 feet to the road below and proceed west on highway 53.
Microsoft's Cleartype technology makes text more blurry. So what can we expect from Microsoft's Clearflow?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
... it gives a whole new meaning to the word "crash"!
Both probably couldn't give me directions to the nearest hooker.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Sometimes it just feels like people are conspiring to avoid me, finally I've got some proof!
This sounds like a sensible idea but if it becomes widespread then the metrics it has used for it's monitoring of the traffic conditions are going to change as people choose new routes based on it's suggestions with the upshot that previously clear routes are now congested.
My own journey to work changes based on the time I leave the house and my local knowledge of the area and problme junctions so I can normally make my way down side streets and 'rat runs' without encountering much traffic. The last thing I want is for anyone else to be told these routes and start to clog them up. It is amazing though the difference it can make if you take what is in theory a slightly longer route to get around stupidly placed roundabouts or congested main roads.
I guess ultimately if people had a perfect knowledge of the traffic situation the congestion would even out so everywhere is just congested at rush hour rather than extremely congested but the basic problem, in the UK at least, is that there just aren't enough roads. Here in Birmingham during the recent building work in the city centre there were some traffic conditions which would just lead inevitably to total gridlock as jams backed up across islands causing more jams which looped all the way around town to hold up the traffic in the original jam even more. We just need more roads.
Some cop with a pink mohawk?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You are about to fall 200 feet to a road below.[Cancel] [Allow]
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The first thing I thought, and I have thought the idea of analyzing traffic flow on a wide scale could give the individual an edge, as soon as the masses know the way around traffic, the jam will just move. So unless this algorithm can automatically figure out where traffic is stuck, and route the users in many different ways, this will eventually not work. Not to mention that in many cases (ie try entering downtown toronto from etobicoke), there are only so many ways to go. In my example you have some side streets, bloor, eglington, gardiner, lake shore. But they all suck, and if you suggest the small residential roads, you'll probably sit just as long waiting to turn from road to road. I've tried. But if it helps at all its worth it imho, its not my money!
Aye, 'tis been a while since I heard the name of the Hound of the Highway, Traffic James.
Jim Axelman was once an ordinary man. He had a wife, three kids, even a Labrador retriever named Buddy. But his life was changed forever as he drove to work on fateful day. You see, he was trying to change lanes while talking on his cell phone and jamming out to some Led Zeppelin playing on the classic cock station when he unfortunately cut off a Gypsy minivan-mom. The Gypsy, being a member of the same PTA as Jim, knew who he was and cursed his name to the Heavens. Since that day, he's been forced to drive the streets.
His blinkers never work. If you're in a hurry, he slows you down. If you're not rushed, he tailgates. He can't stop for food or bathroom breaks, his odometer never changes. He forever wanders the Earth in his dark blue Geo Metro.
It's been said that some nights, on an empty country road.... you can still hear the a never-ending play of Kashmir on the wind.
Before Microsoft ever even did BASIC, Gates and Co had an abortive project called Traf-o-Data, which was somehow to help city planners with traffic management. Now Microsoft has come full circle. I wonder what's next.. after hearing so much about C# as the language of the future, are we going to get a big deal of BASIC?
This is my sig.