I tested the theory myself. I went to Boston recently and followed my GPS. It took me over the Tobin bridge through solid bumper-to-bumper gridlock. When I arrived at the gridlock my GPS said 30 minutes left. 45 minutes later I had travelled about .5 miles and it still said 25 minutes left. Google was completely wrong, but I swear it had me right where it wanted me the entire time.
After getting fed up with traffic, I eventually turned my GPS off and got into the right lane to head towards Cambridge. My logic was that GPS could navigate from anywhere, to anywhere. I would simply go somewhere with less traffic and try the GPS again.
Sure enough I made it to Edward Land blvd and turned my GPS back on. I had a clear 15 minute drive with average traffic for the rest of my trip.
Google saw the traffic I was dealing with, and queued me right in behind it all. It could have recalculated around it, but it legitimately "thought" I only had 30 minutes to go. I guarantee it told all 500 other cars in front of me the same thing.
So we were all following our GPS's, and our GPS's were taking all of us the fastest route. It created a traffic jam and then optimistically pretended there was no traffic jam.
If street lights were truly "smart", with cameras and machine learning to maximize throughput, and GPS's programmed to load balance their own congestion, this problem wouldn't be a problem anymore.
Given I’ve never had reason to use a y-combinator, mocking bird or eta or any of the other colourful terms from the article this post about GPS seems vaguely appropriate.
Which means that in around 14 days I’ll suddenly need to revisit this article and learn all about it because it’s suddenly useful.
Life is strange like that. I do like the term “why bird” though.
I tested the theory myself. I went to Boston recently and followed my GPS. It took me over the Tobin bridge through solid bumper-to-bumper gridlock. When I arrived at the gridlock my GPS said 30 minutes left. 45 minutes later I had travelled about .5 miles and it still said 25 minutes left. Google was completely wrong, but I swear it had me right where it wanted me the entire time.
After getting fed up with traffic, I eventually turned my GPS off and got into the right lane to head towards Cambridge. My logic was that GPS could navigate from anywhere, to anywhere. I would simply go somewhere with less traffic and try the GPS again.
Sure enough I made it to Edward Land blvd and turned my GPS back on. I had a clear 15 minute drive with average traffic for the rest of my trip.
Google saw the traffic I was dealing with, and queued me right in behind it all. It could have recalculated around it, but it legitimately "thought" I only had 30 minutes to go. I guarantee it told all 500 other cars in front of me the same thing.
So we were all following our GPS's, and our GPS's were taking all of us the fastest route. It created a traffic jam and then optimistically pretended there was no traffic jam.
If street lights were truly "smart", with cameras and machine learning to maximize throughput, and GPS's programmed to load balance their own congestion, this problem wouldn't be a problem anymore.