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AndyRoss Occasional Visitor

Joined: Mar 23, 2008 Posts: 8
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Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 3:45 pm Post subject: Real time traffic information |
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I am trying to find out more information about Real-Time Traffic Information in co-pilot 7. I am extremely happy with the co-pilot 7 software and considering the Real-Time traffic information add on.
However there seems very little information telling me exactly what it does and what sort of traffic information it downloads? Is it possible to have a trial of it
anywhere? Is there any reviews of this particular feature anywhere. Does it just re-route traffic jams or road works as well? Where does it get it?s information from? I don?t wish to pay of £35 until I know a little more about it.
Andrew Ross
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ahenry Occasional Visitor

Joined: Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 51
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:58 am Post subject: Re: Real time traffic information |
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AndyRoss wrote: | I am trying to find out more information about Real-Time Traffic Information in co-pilot 7. I am extremely happy with the co-pilot 7 software and considering the Real-Time traffic information add on.
However there seems very little information telling me exactly what it does and what sort of traffic information it downloads? Is it possible to have a trial of it
anywhere? Is there any reviews of this particular feature anywhere. Does it just re-route traffic jams or road works as well? Where does it get it?s information from? I don?t wish to pay of £35 until I know a little more about it. |
The traffic news data for CoPilot comes from ITIS http://www.itisholdings.com/papers.asp
It uses transmitters on National Express coaches, AA vans and Eddie Stobart lorries, along with details of planned roadworks. It means that they cover a wide range of the road network, but that sometimes a delay will not get reported if it turns out that none of the vehicles with a transmitter is held up.
http://www.getmethere.co.uk/temp/trafficapp.html is a WWW site which displays the current warnings with this data.
The other main sources of traffic news data in the UK are Trafficmaster. They use a network of navy blue cameras which use number plate recognition to measure the flow of traffic. You get a predicted delay and you can learn where the transmitters are so you can tell when it will be best to take a detour.
(you can view warnings from their data at http://www.trafficengland.co.uk/) and the BBC local radio stations.
I use the traffic news in CoPilot 6. I haven't tried it in CoPilot 7. |
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AndyRoss Occasional Visitor

Joined: Mar 23, 2008 Posts: 8
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the reply. It sounds like it will be generally fairly reliable. DO you know how good the interaction is between copilot and the traffic information is?
DOes it give me the option to divert around delays or does it automatically divert without any choice.
Finally - what happens if I just have copilot on drive without a programmed route? Will it still identify traffic problems.
Thanks again.
Andrew |
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ahenry Occasional Visitor

Joined: Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 51
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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AndyRoss wrote: | Thanks for the reply. It sounds like it will be generally fairly reliable. DO you know how good the interaction is between copilot and the traffic information is?
DOes it give me the option to divert around delays or does it automatically divert without any choice.
Finally - what happens if I just have copilot on drive without a programmed route? Will it still identify traffic problems.
Thanks again.
Andrew |
With CoPilot 6, you can either get it to look for incidents on your route, around your current position, or around a named location. If an incident is on your route, then you can choose to ignore the problem or avoid it. You can then unavoid the problem at a later date if you like.
A minor irritation is that with the last patch release of CoPilot 6, they switched the order for the list of incidents from the distance from your current location (fine), to an alphabetical listing from the road number (rubbish). I was near Gatwick, on a route to Cambridge and the top of the list was incidents on the A14 2 hours drive away, rather than on the M25 15 minutes away. Hopefully they will have fixed that for CP7.
If you don't have a route programmed, then I don't know if it will search for incidents nearby, but you could do a manual search.
I also have a Trafficmaster Freeway box. It gives basic speech warnings for problems in the next 10-20 miles. I can also get the WWW pages for BBC traffic news on my phone and traffic news from local radio. None of them is perfect. Often you will find that they don't agree. Trafficmaster is good if there is good coverage on a route you use a lot as you can learn where the tranmitters are. CoPilot's traffic news is good as you get to see the location of the problem. Local radio traffic news can be useful, but the presenters are annoying, and they are a pain if you don't know the area as they will often use names that aren't on a map. |
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morticiaskeeper Occasional Visitor

Joined: Jul 16, 2006 Posts: 10
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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You have the option of traffic in a secified city if you're not using routing.
I look for traffic based on Tewkesbury each day and that covers the whole of gloucestershire.
BUT
It has been showing a certain accident for 5 days now. When the M5 closed today,nothing was shown, so I reckon there is an update problem.
When I get back to my main pc, I'll bring it up with ALK |
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