GPS users to Provide Traffic Information

While on a recent road trip, the GPS on the Blackberry 8800 started shouting about upcoming heavy traffic for the next 9 miles. The next 9 miles came and went and the cruise control never left 70 MPH. Where was all of this "heavy traffic"? It became apparent that GPS information could be collected and sent to a centralized server and parsed out to give more accurate traffic information. The current methods of traffic updates on GPS units is simply not working. In the recent World Global Positioning Systems Market Forecast it is reported that cell phone based GPS units will start to do just this. Companies are working on ways to develop probe data that can be sent out to other GPS units providing more accurate traffic conditions. It’s not always that you see companies abandoning what they’ve spent a lot of money setting up, but providing a better user experience tends to rank high with companies.

[Via SlashPhone]

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