You could be stuck in traffic, yet appear to be the only car on that road for the silence of the other cars.
Well, you could infer a fair amount with clever algorithms. If the car is moving in stops and starts, at about 5 MPH, on a major highway, that's probably an indicator of heavy traffic.
If the company is allowed to store individual driving data over long times, you can get even cleverer. "90% of the time when on this road, this driver goes between 60 and 70 MPH. Today they are doing 30, so there is probably some sort of traffic problem." Of course, storing that sort of data would have obvious privacy issues...
Now, none of this lets you know about a traffic jam that has *none* of your cars involved. But at least once one of your customers is trapped, there's a chance that you can avoid sending another one into the same mess.
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Date: 2006-09-28 04:32 pm (UTC)Well, you could infer a fair amount with clever algorithms. If the car is moving in stops and starts, at about 5 MPH, on a major highway, that's probably an indicator of heavy traffic.
If the company is allowed to store individual driving data over long times, you can get even cleverer. "90% of the time when on this road, this driver goes between 60 and 70 MPH. Today they are doing 30, so there is probably some sort of traffic problem." Of course, storing that sort of data would have obvious privacy issues...
Now, none of this lets you know about a traffic jam that has *none* of your cars involved. But at least once one of your customers is trapped, there's a chance that you can avoid sending another one into the same mess.