Sensitivity of HD Traffic

[MrT]

Twice this week I have noticed HD Traffic report two traffic incidents I was held up in for a few minutes. These were both very small incidents and were both caused by cyclists.

One was on the A41 in Watford where it is briefly a single carriageway (by the Mirror print works) and an artic could not get past a cyclist. The other was on the A5183 (in Frogmore) which I never knew had traffic monitoring and was caused by two cyclists and an old dear who would not pass them.

In both cases the delay was around 4 minutes and there were not that many cars being held up, but both incidents appeared on my 940 shortly after I came out the end of them.

Now I was wondering were there many drivers in these two queues being tracked from their mobiles on Vodaphone, were there highways sensors in the roads that reported to TomTom or was it my sole 940 tracking back the delays? (edit: I also had 2 BT (vodaphone network) mobile phones with me)

If the weather is not too bad this weekend I might put the 940 in my pocket and cycle up and down the A5183 and see what happens.

[stealthdevil]

I have noticed this a few times on my journeys. A small delay would only come up once i'm towards the end of the traffic or just out of it. Nothing major for me to complain about and it's good that it's being flagged.

I remember reading in a HD whitepaper if i'm not mistaken that your TomTom is also reporting back to traffic information to HD HQ.

I'm assuming as it's your TomTom, it's sending back GPS co-ordinates rather than relying on triangulation of cell phones. So naturally, the progress in your journey is more accurate thus has more credibility. As such, it is logical to assume the their could be one or two other motorists with HD traffic also reporting back the information to build up the case that there is indeed traffic at that location (combined with mobile phone data).

A good test would be to rally up a few people to go to a motorway with a bunch of PAYG vodafone's and tomtom HDs to see if it reports it as traffic...

[tkerby]

So this could be the new traffic terrorism. Rather than arranging a 'go slow' for a protest, just buy a bunch of PAYG vodafones and a few Tomtoms and drive at 5mph down the motorway and watch as all the traffic gets diverted

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