Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic

Posted by Zonk on Sun Feb 03, 2008 04:33 AM
from the using-the-fillings-in-your-teeth dept.
Wireless Networking Transportation Cellphones Hardware Technology
Roland Piquepaille writes "On February 8, 2008, about 100 UC Berkeley students will participate in the Mobile Century experiment, using GPS mobile phones as traffic sensors. During the whole day, these students carrying the GPS-equipped Nokia N95 will drive along a 10-mile stretch of I-880 between Hayward and Fremont, California. 'The phones will store the vehicles' speed and position information every 3 seconds. These measurements will be sent wirelessly to a server for real-time processing.' As more and more cellphones are GPS-equipped, the traffic engineering community, which currently monitors traffic using mostly fixed sensors such as cameras and loop detectors, is tempted to use our phones to get real-time information about traffic."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Cellphones to monitor highway traffic by rpiquepa (644694)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • ... already [engadget.com] has it, the UK and Germany to follow.

    Wish those other countries could also follow up with Coffee Shops.

    CC.

    • Re:The Netherlands ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wfberg (24378) on Sunday February 03 2008, @06:06AM (#22281140)

      ... already has it, the UK and Germany to follow.


      The TomTom/Vodafone system doesn't use GPS coordinates being sent by mobiles, it only uses triangulation to work out where handsets are, and how fast they're moving. Highways are already equipped with detection loops every half mile or so, so this is mostly useful for smaller roads. It won't detect roads where cars are at a complete standstill though, if the phone isn't moving fast enough (e.g. less than, say, 4mph) it'll assume the phone's just in the pocket of someone who isn't in a car.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by owlnation (858981)

      the UK and Germany to follow
      Surprising really, that the UK isn't the first -- since it is already leading the World in surveillance technology and legislation that violates both privacy and basic human rights.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gordonjcp (186804)
        I thought that was the US? In the UK, there aren't armed thugs with police badges randomly shooting people. That's what *I* call a violation of human rights.
          • Yes, and they got in trouble for it. One every ten years or so. As opposed to the US, where it's something like fifty deaths per week.
  • Another idea I had years ago [calum.org]. My idea though was to pay people to run the software on their phones (just as Google pay people to have ads on their sites - paying per hour of data uploaded, or something similar), and then lease the aggregated data to interested parties. Companies interested in building/buying toll roads, government agencies to see if new roads need to be built, etc etc.
    However, with SatNav getting more and more sophisticated, it was only going to be a matter of time before TomTom (or whoever) built a model where it uploaded your position back to them, enabling them to build up a realtime picture of traffic speeds, which they could then use to update drivers to avoid jams, etc.
    • They don't need to - you can triangulate the position of any mobile phone to within a few feet if it's switched on.. it just needs someone with access to that data to be able to work out the speeds that they're travelling.
      • Wrong. It's generally from about 300 metres in cities to 1-4 miles in rural areas. And it's not that accurate. It's just the point in the middle of the towers that your phone can "see". Check out http://calum.org/location/ [calum.org] - it uses both methods. GPS when I'm running the GPS app on my phone, and cell-triangulation at other times. Currently, it says I'm at 51.452371,-2.618589 +/-372 metres. Good, but not that good. Plus you only update when you make/receive a call/text/data session, switch the phone on/off,
      • Yep. A previous idea I had was for a black-box for cars. You could buy one, and have your insurance lowered, because it would make working out what happened after a crash much easier. "You did 96 mph through this cross-roads - we're not going to pay."
        • "You did 96 mph through this cross-roads - we're not going to pay."

          Sure, that's the way to convince people to fit spy-ware into their cars!

          If the Black Box was owned by you and no one had authority to examine it without your express permission that might be a different story. You could use it to prove you weren't breaking some traffic rule if you wanted to, or decide not to use the information, at which point the jury could draw their own conclusions.

          That might work!

          • "Draw their own conclusions"? You mean like "He's accused of speeding, but won't share the black box data. Therefore, he's obviously guilty of speeding and is probably trying to hide something much worse, too. So now we just have to decide how many millions to fine him for those other, unknown crimes that he's hiding..."?
        • You mean like Norwich Union http://www.norwichunion.com/pay-as-you-drive/index.htm [norwichunion.com]?
          • Not really. That's just how much you drive. I built a black-box about 14 years ago, and it measured things like: speed, revs, G force, accelerator, brake, clutch, gear selected, what state the lights/indicators/windscreen wipers were on, etc.
            Basically, after a crash, you would have been able to recreate the lead up to the accident exactly. Were they braking, were they at 5000 revs in 3rd gear, or 3000 in 5th. Did they have their lights on, etc.
            • The problem is that it is a "slippery slope" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope [wikipedia.org] ). At what point does such a device go from being a discount for having one to penalty for not having one? At what point does it go from being an option to a requirement? At what point does it then evolve into something used for times that were not accident related but for any violations? At what point do corporations and governments start monitoring the data without your consent or even knowing.

              I see the "slippe
  • skeptical -1

    Will it not be misused by finding the routine information of people?

    • Perhaps in the future systems like this will be linked into your phone to deliver real-time advertisements for nearby stores, restaurants, etc. Of course, using your cell phone while driving will still be illegal...

      *** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Get 2-for-1 pizzas at Papa John's!!!! Turn right ahead.

      *** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy lingerie for that special someone at Victoria's Secret!!! Turn left ahead.

      *** INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE *** Buy [driver chucks cell phone out window]

      *** INCOMING TEXT MES
  • Will this gps information be warrantless?
  • On Fberuary 3, 2008, about 100.000 Slashdot readers will participate in the clickvertising experiment, using website increase to Ronad Piquepailles site. ...

  • Call me olde fashioned but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blacklabelsk8er (839023) on Sunday February 03 2008, @05:21AM (#22280980) Homepage Journal
    The more I see stories like this, the more I feel that a full-on Big Brother world could be oncoming. Sure, it could provide all kinds of data on the technicalities of GPS tracking via mobile phone triangulation or whatnot, but how much danger is there that these kinds of 'experiments' could be field tests for a greater invasion of privacy? RealID or even RFID, combined with this sort of GPS tracking could provide all the pieces needed to make our highway system a channelized control mechanism.

    I should be more 'forward thinking' for my age I suppose. Does anyone else think that our privacy outweighs the convenience that realtime navigation and itinerary interactivity could potentially provide?
  • Slow from 6-9:30 and 4:30-7:00, mostly northbound in the morning, mostly southbound in the evening. When do I get my grant money?
  • It doesn't make sense to use phones or triangulation to track cars. Keep in mind that driving is a highly regulated privilege, not a right. Within a few years you can be pretty sure that a GPS will be required in every motor vehicle (looking at you, sport bike riders). Have fun getting out of those speeding tickets, claiming you stopped at the stop sign, weren't weaving all over the road, weren't at the bank when it was robbed, etc. It's going to happen.
    • Keep in mind that driving is a highly regulated privilege, not a right.

      Freedom of travel is a basic human right. (Papers please!) I suppose its questionable how you do it though. If you can't get there by bus, train, or air and hitchhiking and pedestrians on highways are illegal then tell me how does one travel freely?
      • I don't see how regulating the operation of a motor vehicle has anything to do with freedom of travel. And besides, the law already requires that you have a license, the vehicle be registered and street legal, that you obey traffic regulations, etc. All of that relates to an even more basic right, personal safety. Doesn't it?

  • The bigbrother tag amuses me, because it seems to imply that this cell phone GPS thing could be used against your will to track you or something. Well I've got a N95 and I have no fear of that happening, because for the GPS to synchronise you need to slide your cell phone out and wait about one minute and a half in a clear outdoors location. So clearly using a N95 you can be sure that the GPS will only be used if you want it to be used.

    • Well, the first thing I did when my now ex-wife filed a restraining order on me (more or less standard dirty trick procedure in divorces these days) was turn ON the active GPS tracking on my cell phone. I need to have some sort of alibi available to me in case she decides to do it again.

      Divorce sucks.
  • It'd be interesting to provide a facility in phones to help make this less prone to privacy issues & semi-legal use by law enforcement. For example, allowing stations to poll passing phones for position and "instantaneous" speed (calculated internally by the phone using, say, the last 3 GPS position checks). Something like that would permit phone responses to omit any unique identifier since there would not be as much of a need to connect multiple responses from a single unit.

    An alternative would be to

  • Not new. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Blrfl (46596)
    This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination.

    In 1994 (that's pushing two decades ago) I worked on a pilot project with Bell Atlantic Mobile (now Verizon), FHWA, Virginia DOT and the Maryland DOT that tracked mobile phones along the Washington, DC Beltway. The phones didn't have to cooperate, and it was also discovered that call rates went through the roof just as backups started to form. A bunch of the technology we developed ended up in some of the early E911 systems.
  • Anyone who has lived in an earthquake zone knows that even a ten second warning of an impending earthquake could save many lives. Dive under a desk, stand in a door frame, get out of an elevator, stop your car, etc.

    I wonder if cell phones equipped with GPS and an accelerometer could provide such a warning? Even if only twenty per cent of the accelerometers registered abnormal acceleration, a real time analysis of the data would show the distinctive expanding wave front that could only be caused by a major e
  • Just another reason why not having a mobile telephone is better.
  • How is it a story that a bunch of students are going to try to do this, when there are already commercial services providing the same information? Heck, /. even covered this back in 2005!

    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/143247 [slashdot.org]

    And that was something like the 4th time the story had been posted.

    there's also:

    http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/30723/113/ [tgdaily.com]

    and these guys have been around for ages.

    http://www.zipdash.com/ [zipdash.com]

    You know what? If they were running a free service that everyone could register

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Datamonstar (845886)
        Disable javascript for all but trusted sites.
      • How many people will click that to see what it does that is so bad it can take out Firefox? I just did :-) (and it probably takes out Konqueror, but I was quick with the "pkill konqueror" and didn't wait to find out).

    • Re:I only care about getting me there (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukas84 (912874) on Sunday February 03 2008, @05:24AM (#22280990) Homepage
      No country i know has got mass transit that allows you to ditch the car.

      I live in Switzerland, and some people argue that it has one of the best mass transit systems in the world - if that is true, other country must REALLY be in a heap of shit, because it sucks bad here.

      Mass Transit just isn't flexible enough to help most people. There are cases where it might be better than sitting on congested streets, but that doesn't make it good. If i expect congestion, i'll just take the motorcycle instead of the car - this has downsides of it's own, but it's still better than taking the train or bus.
      • As someone living in Berlin/Germany, I must say it's perfectly possible to get by without a car, at least in the places I have lived so far (towns >= 40,000). A car might be required in more rural areas or if your job requires it. And yes, sometimes a car would be more convenient, but it's a lot cheaper to just rent one for those occasions.
      • and ditched my car 7 years ago. I live in Boston across the street from a subway stop. There's another one a few hundred yards away, a third line 1 mile away and a fourth 1.3 miles away. I ride my bicycle year round for many trips 5 miles or less, and arrive faster than the subway or a car. Walking a mile is also no big deal, and I occasionally car pool if a neighbor and I are both headed to a meeting or event.

        What about groceries? Smaller trips or deliveries [peapod.com]. What about big purchases? If I ever need

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by palegray.net (1195047)
      I wonder if these sort of systems might lead to real-time changes in toll prices some day. Transportation authorities could leverage real-time stats to charge more for passage during peak traffic periods, and this sort of system would accommodate unexpected increases without any additional effort on their part. It could even sense traffic congestion issues in other areas and anticipate upcoming loads. Not that I agree with such practices, just wondering if they'll be implemented. Couple this with highly exp

    • measuring a system changes the system.
      Does this mean that the students do, or do not, end up in front of the Marine [villainouscompany.com] recruiting office?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jamesh (87723)

        In...3....2....1....this will be abused by the police to prove you drove 80 mph for the 10 mile stretch instead of 55...

        How is that abuse? Anyone doing 80mph on a road where the limit is 55mph is breaking the law and should be caught and fined, and if they do it too many times, have their car impounded and crushed into a little cube, and then charged a disposal fee for their cube.

        I have been doing a lot of driving the last few years and the amount of times I get passed by dickheads doing stupid speeds makes

        • Re:Measuring changes results (Score:5, Insightful)

          by vertinox (846076) on Sunday February 03 2008, @09:23AM (#22281862)
          How is that abuse? Anyone doing 80mph on a road where the limit is 55mph is breaking the law and should be caught and fined, and if they do it too many times, have their car impounded and crushed into a little cube, and then charged a disposal fee for their cube.

          I think the problem is that of now, everyone breaks the law every now and then without really thinking about it. If the world got to a state where you got punished every time you broke the law even slightly then such issue would get quite serious.

          In fact, I'd wager (if you have a car) that you broke the speed limit somewhere the last time you drove even if it was simply 1 to 5mph over the limit.

          The real problem is that many local and state government gets a great deal of revenue from speeding and parking tickets so rather than to alleviate the core problem of they encourage quotas and sometimes post arbitrary low speed limits in order to increase revenue. I mentioned parking tickets because there was story a while back where an Apple Store offered to buy two parking meters outside their store to mark as no-parking zone for aesthetics (you know Apple) at the theoretical price of what those parking meters could provide if they were maned 24/7 365 days a year, but the city refused on the grounds it had never been done but moreover they made more money from parking tickets than the actual meters. Its the same with speeding... They don't want reduction but they want the violations.

          If a cell phone system allowed them to charge violators instantly it would result in more of this at the extreme not to mention possible corruption. Recently in Philadelphia, there is a big spat between city hall and the Parking Authority [philly.com] about revenue and where it is going and complaints about corruption the the Authority organization.

          My first suggestion would be to either have revenues earn not go to the gathering organization itself but possibly elsewhere like education or charity.

          And if they want a technical solution, then I would argue that make it so cars can't break the posted limit rather than fining them money every time they violate the speed (and or parking). Now keep in mind, I'm probaly one of the more slower drivers out there you'll meet and you'll never see me park in a place I'm not supposed to (I'm that anal) but the issue that these organizations being allowed another way to squeeze money and make things arbitrarily "more illegal" in order to increase revenue bothers me.

          None of these government bodies actually want to curb speeding. Their livelihood depends on it.

          • Re:Measuring changes results (Score:5, Insightful)

            by jacksonj04 (800021) <nick@tn-uk.net> on Sunday February 03 2008, @09:37AM (#22281950) Homepage
            Making cars not able to break the speed limit is a massive safety problem. I've been in situations (usually on a motorway or other large trunk road) where something has happened, a guy loses control and pings off the central reservation etc and I needed the extra speed *immediately* to get out of the way. If I was already cruising down the outside lane at 70mph (UK limit) then where would I get the extra speed from? I suppose some form of 'burst' limiting could be a solution.

            Also there's a huge difference between safe and not. On an empty motorway with clear vision I would say it's safe to do 90mph or up, conversely on a motorway in heavy fog it's common to see people going no faster than 50, and that's on the outside. If you're being really anal about it then some drivers are far safer at high speeds than others. There can be no technical solution to this unless there is a system in place which knows the skill of all drivers, the position of all cars, all road conditions, and is capable of making intelligent judgements about what is safe and what isn't.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by SvetBeard (922070)

          I work in the traffic engineering industry. There are two things you have to realize about speeding: first, many speed limits are set artificially low and second, speed itself isn't dangerous--it's the difference in speed that causes accidents.

          The accepted method for setting speed limits is to collect speed data on all vehicles on the road for 24 hours on a typical day. This is usually done using those two rubber tubes you may see placed across the road at times. The speed limit is then supposed to be set

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by WCLPeter (202497)

            This means that if you are the guy driving 55 mph when everyone else is doing 80, you are the one driving recklessly.

            Sorry to burst your bubble but if the posted limit is 55 and I am doing 55, blasting by me at 25 over the posted limit makes you reckless.

            We could argue about the road conditions, the rated speed of the road, or your perception that you're a good driver; none of that matters. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and the posted speed is the posted speed. Don't want to follow the rules of the road as posted? Then don't drive.

            I'm not in any way saying you can't exceed the speed limit in an emergency situat

          • it's the difference in speed that causes accidents.

            Every 1mph you increase your speed is a 1mph increase in the speed difference between you and the trees and light posts you are flying past. Or the car by the side of the road just over the hill on a very narrow shoulder who's just blown a tyre or broken down.

            Speaking of blown tyres... there is a fair difference between a blowout at 55mph and 80mph, or even just a brief aquaplane over some water or a slide in some gravel that you didn't notice around a bend

          • You are both correct, at least in part. Fines are collected completely in addition to taxes for any individual who gets fined (e.g. there is no deduction on your tax forms for government fines.) But governments DO assume there will be a certain revenue from fines each year and put that in their budgets, even though that amount is not actually guaranteed to be there at the end of the year. If the governments did not fine or fine revenue came in well below expectations, their total revenues would decrease and

          • You just _try_ to come take my car away ... we'll have some fun, I guarantee it.

            We all signed up to (approximately) the same rules when we got our licenses. So play nice.

            Fortunately, I won't be the one taking your car away. I don't know what the rules are you where you are, but some states over here (Australia) have implemented anti-'hoon' laws, which go something like if you are caught drag racing or being obviously dangerous on the road (eg not just 20kph over the limit) you'll get your car taken away for

          • You are looking at a very small picture. If the police abuse this technology, anyone near the gps coordinates where a crime is committed is instantly a suspect.

            So what? Would you rather be a suspect because someone said you were there, or because you were there? That would never hold up in court anyway, a cellphone isn't a person. I assumed we were talking now about gps stuff permanent attached to cars.

            I had to rush someone to the hospital a few days ago. I broke the speed limit. Should my cell phone be tel

      • location capabilities of cell phones (done via triangulation, not gps) is by default set to 'e 911 only' if you turn the feature on, and the police start using the cell phone company records to prove your speed it's your own fault for turning it on. Still, i doubt that the cell companies even want to collect, and send all that data to the police. if you're not in a call, it uses a lot of network bandwidth to triangulate 'every' phone, every '3' seconds, even if it's only 'the phones on the highway'

        it's
    • I believe the argument in favor of cellphone GPS is that it allows emergency responders to find you when calling 911 from a phone line that isn't tied to a fixed location.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.