Aha. A bus of 99 people would be moving that slowly… because of a traffic jam.
And I live near Mount Vernon in Virginia. We get tour buses year round on every street with or without a regular route and I bet they are capable of holding 99 individuals. And I doubt Google keeps track of school bus routes.
This sounds like a great idea. I live in a place where there’s a lot of commuter traffic through what should be a quiet neighborhood, because of people trying an end run around work on the highway. If some of them could be fooled into thinking our street is blocked, that would make it a lot quieter and safer.
There’s a video I can no longer find of a motorcyclist lane splitting through a city street of stopped traffic shown as red on Google maps. He’s got the phone mounted on his handlebars and the action is captured through a helmet cam or something like that. As he quickly cruises between the lanes, the map starts showing the street as green, accompanied by the rider’s laughter and quick apology if that ruins anyone’s commute. Probably a couple of years ago that I saw this, hence why I doubt I will find it again.
I’m not sure from where you infer an apparently shocking level of market penetration for GMaps.
I bet that the majority of cars have no satnav and drivers know where they are going; the next three largest segments have either (a) native in-car satnav (b) dedicated satnav devices (e.g. TomTom, Garmin) and (c*) are using a phone with maps (Google Maps or Apple Maps, but others are in play too - and let’s not forget those using proprietary or open source satnav map/app combinations).
So Google Maps’ market penetration may be high, but I’d reckon it is a very long way from “most of the cars are following whatever Google tells them”.
And it’s Berlin, not the US, which may make a difference, too.
And * it’s a pain when c in parentheses is automatically turned into (c)
Well spotted. I hadn’t noticed that. One part of the mystery solved, then.
@Andy_Keck
This generates a use case for GMaps to have more modes of navigation. As well as walking or driving they need ‘riding two wheels - pedals’ and ‘riding two wheels - engine’.
This will, of course result in the equine community demanding a mode for ‘riding - four legs’.
Seriously, though, I would expect Google to have a weighting factor for the odd/rogue fast moving phone in congestion. They DO know motorbikes exist, I’m sure. And in UK what USians call ‘lane-splitting’ is an unheard of term - motorcyclists are at liberty to do it anywhere, subject to normal safety/driving with due care and attention rules. So if they did not have such a weighting factor to prevent red going green simply due to one person on a bike, people would by now have sussed GMaps was too unreliable and found alternatives.
We need a posse of 99 motorcyclists to cruise around looking for some seriously gridlocked traffic and breeze through it all and see what GMaps makes of it.
But only if it served as a useful hack. Otherwise it’s performance art. Right?
Or a large convoy of very small vehicles?
(Really that was just an excuse for this:)
Speaking with 9to5Google , a spokesperson from Google has responded to this situation to clarify a few things. In normal usage, Google does use a large number of devices running Maps in a single place as proof of a traffic jam, something this rare and very specific case took advantage of. In the statement below, though, the company does hint that it might use cases like this to further improve how Maps handles traffic data.
Whether via car or cart or camel, we love seeing creative uses of Google Maps as it helps us make maps work better over time.
Google also mentions that its systems are continuously refreshed from a variety of sources and that it’s committed to providing the most comprehensive and accurate maps possible. The company also highlights, somewhat jovially, how it can distinguish between cars and motorcycles in some regions, but it hasn’t cracked wagons just yet.
We need a posse of 99 motorcyclists to cruise around looking for some seriously gridlocked traffic and breeze through it all and see what GMaps makes of it
Sign me up!
To be fair, there is a traffic jam… caused by some old guy in the middle of the road, pulling 99 cellphones in a radio flyer wagon.
Pulled along by some old guy, 99 mobile phones go by.
If you only had 11 phones, it would identify them as long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.
As a fan of heist movies, this seems like a perfect way of clearing the street for the getaway. Especially if you are google embracing your lack of not being evil. Those look like a nice set of 100 phones.
Slowly backs away from plan to stuff trunk of car with 99 cell phones
This is the sort of nonsense up with which I can get stuck behind.
~~ w/ apologies to Winston Churchill
Man, this guy has waaaay too much time on his hands.
I mean really, so he figured out how to increase entropic disorder. Very impressive.
Well, if I were robbing a bank, I might find it helpful to have the streets immediately outside the bank empty for my getaway.
But really, physical traffic barriers would probably work better. Especially considering that the police will be reluctant to crash through a barrier, and will probably lose some time moving them out of the way.
