Bluetooth Used To Track Traffic Times

First time accepted submitter ChanukahZombie writes "The City of Calgary, AB has introduced a new traffic congestion/timing information platform for drivers. 'The system collects the publicly available data from Bluetooths to estimate the travel time and congestion between points along those roads and displays the information on overhead message boards to motorists.' Currently only available on the Deerfoot Trail (the city's main highway artery) but will be 'expanded in the future to include sections of Crowchild Trail and Glenmore Trail in the southwest.' As for privacy concerns, the city says it cannot connect the MAC address collected to the device owner."

Comments

What gadgets are being monitored?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

TFA is low on details re: what Bluetooth devices are being monitored. I know my cellphone and laptop have Bluetooth support, but I keep that mostly turned off. Do all cars in Canada come with built-in Bluetooth tracking technology? Triangulating from actual cellphone signals appears to me to be a more fool-proof if not spook-proof technology. The limited range of BT devices do make them a better choice in terms of privacy.

Re:What gadgets are being monitored?

[zerro]

You don't need to monitor every bluetooth device. You just need a decent sampling of users passing through points in your "system". This is just one of several ways you can uniquely identify a particular object to track overall flow of the herd.

Sounds like a good tech that would be abused

[bjdevil66]

Of course no government or private entity would ever start tracking speeds of drivers and start sending owners of the phones speeding violations if they're deemed to be speeding, right?

Re:Sounds like a good tech that would be abused

[Obfuscant]

Wait, so you're saying the system is easily corruptible and bypassable, but it still makes it feasible?

Back in the 60s, they had these things called "payphones". Little slots you put money in, you got to call other people. There was info around specifying what kind of washer (and the mod to it) would substitute for a quarter. Easily corruptible. Some of the phones, all you had to do was short the microphone case to the phone and you got free calls. Easily corruptible. Very feasible.

In the 70s, the uni library had a copy machine system that people could put a card into and charge copies to their accounts. A simple plastic card, with an internal layer that was opaque to IR -- except for the holes punched into it before being laminated between two IR transparent but visibly opaque covers. Easily corruptible. (All you had to do was punch holes in a standard playing card until the system accepted it as valid...) Very feasible.

Every so often, the road department puts out traffic counting systems to determine how many cars use certain roads. Used to be a simple hose with a pressure sensor. Yeah, someone could jump up and down on the hose and create fictional cars. Easily corruptible system, but very feasible.

Any system where the expectation of being gamed is low enough that the cost of being gamed is covered by the honest people is still easily corruptible but quite feasible for regular use. Most people aren't going to be spoofing their bluetooth MAC address while driving down the road, if they even know how to do it. That makes this easily corruptible system quite feasible for measuring average traffic speeds.

Re:But...

[Charliemopps]

Because everyone knows it's impossible to spoof a mac address...

Re:What's so new about this?

[icebike]

Google Maps already does this with Android phones feeding google traffic density and speed data.
Its eerily accurate.

Traveling over the holiday weekend we got into some crawling slow traffic on the freeway. Google maps traffic layer said the red zone would end ahead as soon as we passed a particular location which just happened to be near a car dealership. As soon as we drove by that dealership traffic resumed normal flow.

And they do this with zero additional infrastructure. Why is Calgary wasting tax payer money installing additional sensors, when they could buy the service from Google, or probably just use it for free?

Re:What's so new about this?

[icebike]

There is a significant density of Android phones. Just about everywhere.
I just whistled up a map of Calgary, and turned on the Traffic layer. I can see every traffic jam in the city in real time.

If you can't see that, perhaps you need to learn how to actually use your phone.

Re:But...

[MightyYar]

Oh, that could be fun. With a few buddies you could make their system think you were going 500 MPH or so. Do it with enough devices and you could probably get their signs to say something like: Avg Time to Vancouver - 1 hour.

Re:What's so new about this?

[petman]

I wonder how Google is able to map the traffic density in countries where Google Map navigation is not available. For example, Google Map navigation is not available here in Malaysia, so I use a modded version of the Google Map android app that allows navigation internationally. Surprisingly, I can turn on the Traffic layer in the app and it would show the traffic density. Is Google actually getting the data from the modded apps? I would be surprised if so many people here are actually using the modded version instead of the official app that disables navigation.

You people are you paranoid

[petman]

Personally I think this is an ingenious use of technology. You people are so paranoid about privacy. You seem to be able to find a sinister side to everything, don't you? Come on, get over it. Let's celebrate creativity instead of always raining on people's parade.

California had real time traffic data for decades

[Animats]

CALTRANS uses loop detectors in freeways and major roads to monitor congestion. They just count cars in each lane and measure how fast they're going. They've been doing that for over two decades. You can see the result at . LA used to have a dedicated cable channel with that data. No privacy-invading user-identifying technology needed.

The data is used in several ways. The most important one is that when the system detects high traffic density at slow speed at one sensor, and lower density at higher speed at the next one in the same direction, it means trouble, usually an accident. The traffic detectors report the lanes separately. If something is blocking a lane and traffic is going around it, that's detected too. Cell phone and Bluetooth monitoring won't give you that.

CALTRANS has had cameras (which you can watch on line) on high poles over freeways for decades. Some have pan, tilt, and zoom capability, so when the automated system detects trouble, someone can use a camera to look at the problem area and dispatch whatever is needed.

Another use of this data is to control the metering light system at on-ramps. Freeway throughput peaks at 35 MPH (at higher speeds, the cars have to space out more) and cars are deliberately delayed a few seconds at on-ramps when speeds drop below that level.

Both of these functions require reasonably accurate data, but there's no need to identify cars individually. This all works quite well without it. Probably better. Counting all the cars on a second by second basis is more useful for detecting problems fast than some statistical measure of some of them.

The data also goes out to web sites, apps, driving time predictors, etc. There's an free API, integration with transit data, integration with CHP incident info, a developer group, etc.

A truism of traffic management is that fast response to trouble on a freeway increases the capacity by about one lane, and it's a lot cheaper than adding a lane.

So I'm not too impressed with some small-scale trial that snoops on Bluetooth headsets.