GPS, GPS study finds that real-time traffic updates save drivers four days per year
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted August 28th 2009 11:23AM
posted August 28th 2009 11:23AM
You know what we hate? Sitting in gridlock when we could be, you know, out doin' stuff. At the very least, it's the antithesis of the "wind in your hair," Dean Moriarty-esque image we've carefully cultivated over the years. "If only," we say to ourselves, "there was a way to find routes that were free of congestion." Sure, we've heard all about your fancy real-time traffic updates -- but how well do they actually work? According to a study by the GIS data and services company NAVTEQ (so, you know, take it with a grain of salt), drivers that use GPS systems with real-time traffic info spend 18% less time behind the wheel than those who do not (that's a whopping four days over the course of a single year, or enough time to watch 1 1/2 Peter Watkins films). In addition, the company says that smarter navigation has been shown to lower CO2 output by 21 percent -- which is a good deal, no matter how you slice it. There's been no study yet to determine how drastically driver performance would decrease if Bob Dylan was the voice of your PND, but we'll definitely keep our eyes out for that one.
Al new cars should drive automatically to your destination within the city...
1- eliminate accidents
2- eliminate traffic jams
3-eliminate Taxi drivers...
this will solve 3 of the worlds biggest problems..
next on the list is kill all nerds who write virus/spyware....
1- eliminate accidents
Whilst that would be the dream, this system would only work if there was one central computer controlling the road network with a redundant AI in the car to sense its surroundings and to stop if the control system is about to make a stupid mistake.
2- eliminate traffic jams
Yes and no, the current road networks are meticulously designed and monitored to try to prevent gridlocks, as are traffic light sequences - it's a very, very complicated system. It would be possible to make it more efficient, but there will come a point when the system reaches its maximum "load" and drivers would have to wait for the metaphorical buffer to empty before entering. Will this work? No idea, but a road still has a finite capacity, no amount of computational hijinks will change that.
3-eliminate Taxi drivers...
Again, yes and no. The whole reason you get a taxi is because you don't have your car with you, not because you don't know where you're going. An AI system would only help if either everyone had access to any car (sort of like a bus pass) or if your car would autonomously drive to your location to pick you up.
I think AI is certainly the way to go for long distance motorways/highways, and yes, human error is the main cause of road accidents, but i don't think everything should be automated. Especially given the unreliability of certain GPSs leading large trucks down narrow country roads or simply leading people into rivers.
accidents aren't the biggest problems...its the dumbass rubber necks that "have to get a look"
do you really find someone else's misfortune THAT INTERESTING?
real-time traffic updates in US still sucks, I wish we would have the same system Europe has ... i'm not really impressed by my Garmin 275T
this is what I'm talking about http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/INRIX-starts-real-time-traffic-flow-service-in-Europe_a1652.html
it's crazy how inaccurate traffic information is in Bay Area, sometimes my GPS routes me to roads which have no traffic info at all and yet are very busy (even more than original road)
The Garmin isn't responsible for the traffic updates, it's the map provider who supplies the real-time traffic information. Be mad at NAVTEQ, not Garmin.
At least you have some form of real time traffic updates. Up here in the great white north (Canada) we got squat (unless you live in Toronto in which case you are the center of the universe, we know, blah blah blah). I drove thorough eastern US with my Magellan and really appreciated the real time traffic updates. Saved me a lot of headaches.
well ... I bought the service from Garmin, I kinda care less who provides it to Garmin. US is so behind Europe, it's not even funny. When are we going to really start using cell phones triangulations for traffic instead of silly cameras and cables on freeways?
I'm taking this story with an entire salt cellar
I call BS because our Garmin never shows the correct traffic!
And that is why it's worth it to me to get a GPS. A lot of people ask why one is needed if you are just going to be driving around in the city. A GPS to me just isn't getting to Point A to Point B but traffic updates, POIs, and alternate routes when a road is close (I can get lost in the suburbs).
I would have to call BS on this study. My GPS warns me of traffice 98% of the time WHILE I AM SITTING IN IT. The entire system is only as good as the input. It doesn't matter how sexy of a voice you have giving you traffic updates (I personally like the English Accent Girl on my Garmin) if there was no eye on the ground to report to the system that a traffic jam has occured.
I find Sirius NacTraffic to be horrible. It will send me off a perfectly good highway onto some tiny back road that takes twice as long. And when the main road is jammed, it rarely knows that. I never listen to it anymore.
I'm sure that a lot of people with smartphones that have Google Maps installed (myself included), are using their phones to check for traffic before they head out on one highway or another. It's incredibly easy and saves a ton of time.
You can only save time and money when you have information while majority others don't , if everyone has such surface (like if government decide to broadcast it for free over FM), it'll save less than 1 hour a year.
I was thinking the same thing. It would be odd to hear your GPS suggest an alternate route and then see 3/4 of the other drivers in front of you all speeding towards the same exit you were going to take.
No offense but that's really missing the idea. The real goal is to optimize traffic flow. Not that you personally find some super secret route but that overall traffic can move quicker if routes are optimized as people logically choose less congested routes. If the data really is real time, as one route becomes more congested then people would move to another one.
Maybe 4 days a year if you add up all the savings from all the drivers using a GPS.
I remember driving around the San Diego area for work. I would listen to the radio stations report traffic conditions and I've never experienced any level of accuracy as far as trafic conditions go. I think the radio stations reported traffic conditions 20 minutes or so later than they actually occured. And I am willing to bet that GPS traffic conditions are even more inaccurate and suffer from an even greater delay.
no kidding, I have to cross over the Chesapeake bay bridge every day.
On Monday, a car on fire on the bridge shut it doesn for an hour. I was 1 mile from the toll lanes, and people were getting out of their cars an walking around. Obvious nobody was going anywhere. Traffic every 10 minutes on the radio? "No problems east bound at the bay bridge". 10 minutes later? Still in the same spot. Radio "Some slowing in traffic eastbound as you approach the bay bridge". Lots of help that was. Didn't move for an hour.
GPS reroute? The only alternate route is a 2.6 hour drive. GPS traffic service is useless to me. I let it expire on my Megallans.
If you are a proud iphone owner would you not be glad to be stuck in a jam so you can play with your iphone for hours on end? In other words would the 'we' in this article's "You know what we hate?" not be happy rather than sad?
Braess’s Paradox
"The collective optimization of individual driving routes by drivers using realtime traffic maps slows everyone down. That is, everyone picking the "fastest" route on the map results in overall slowdowns." (source: http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/10/06/does-closing-roads-cut-delays/ )
So the only rational way to solve congestion is to put a price on it.
That only holds if each individuals route is calculated with no regard for the routes chosen by other drivers following the same optimization. If the algorithm was controlling all the driver's routes, it could optimize by only sending enough drivers to alternate routes such that both routes are cleared at the same time. That would require that 100% of drivers had the system, followed directions, drove predictably, ...
The thing is not all drivers check at the same time.
I have 1 possible route to work that has never had a traffic jam, but I'm glad to hear if I buy this company's product I can make it less traffic-y.
This is very interesting in light of the study that also came out recently, concluding that the advent of instant traffic updates has CAUSED many traffic jams -- people recalculating routes to avoid traffic then create new traffic 'cos all the nav units direct them to the same route.
Less traffic the better. I didn't think much of it at first, but the real-time traffic updates on the GPS I recently got have actually helped me quite a bit. It was a great deal especially if it could save me that much time. If anyone wants to check it out - http://www.computersncs.com/rd_p?p=186122&t=9544&a=1963-sGPS&gift=1963
Or, you can save the same amount of time or if employers would jump into the 21st century by moving to a results-oriented culture and allow their employees to set their schedule. Imagine the time saved by not having to drive in rush hour traffic.
Ill take this as complete Bulls*it. There is no way it saves 4 days a year. That's like saying I spend half a month sitting on the toilet. Most ridiculous story I have ever read on this site.
Oh man I wish my in car Honda GPS had traffic on it.. I hate when it has me take the Cross Bronx in NYC which everyone knows has the worst traffic EVER or the Hutch in the summer which always stinks.. it's really dangerous to have to check the iPhone Google Map for traffic to figure out better routes and then to insert waypoints in the Honda GPS to circumnavigate the traffic..
So even if the traffic systems in the GPSes suck, it has gotta be better than this...
How about people working from home ? how much do they save ? For me at least it's about 45mn each way if I have to drive to work, which saves me about 1h30 *5 days in a week * 52 weeks == 16 days
QPS = Less CO2 = Less Greenlife.
"Don't go to Microsoft!"
I prefer to listen to a radio station that has regular traffic updates. In the winter most of the slow traffic is caused by the people without snow tires.
Traffic monitoring systems are incredibly undeveloped, currently. I have never once been helped by traffic information on my GPS, even using the two largest traffic services in the US.
Add me to the lsit of people who have never had any luck with their gps actually helping them reroute in high traffic situations. It's been completely useless every big city I've been in. Thankfully I got a 265t, which has free traffic, and not that MSN crap
My dad got a ticket for going on a one-way road the wrong way. Thanks loads, GPS.