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Gov App Detects Potholes As Your Drive Over Them
An anonymous reader writes "The City of Boston has released an app that uses the accelerometer in your smartphone to automatically report bumps in the road as you drive over them. From the article: 'The application relies on two components embedded in iPhones, Android phones, and many other mobile devices: the accelerometer and the Global Positioning System receiver. The accelerometer, which determines the direction and acceleration of a phone’s movement, can be harnessed to identify when a phone resting on a dashboard or in a cupholder in a moving car has hit a bump; the GPS receiver can determine by satellite just where that bump is located.' I am certain that this will not be used to track your movements, unless they are vertical."
I agree this smells of a developer that thinks they've come up with a great innovation that won't work in practice. I've used accelerometers in vehicle / equipment monitoring applications and unless the mechanical bonding is solid and/or known the results are practically useless. Especially with a phone where having it in your pocket while you adjust sitting position and any other number of things will possibly have a similar acceleration profile to hitting a pot hole.
They'd probably be better having a way to report things from a menu, then you could cover things like traffic lights out and other general traffic hazzards. Anyone that cared enough to run the app probably wouldn't mind pulling over in a safe spot, adjusting back the position from their current position and submitting a report. You could assign a "karma" to each user account to help prioritize and sift out asshats, and it would also remove any privacy concerns.