Are anti-traffic jam applications effective?

Are anti-traffic jam apps worth it?

As every year, the crossroads of summer weekends are synonymous with traffic jams on the vacation route. Several navigation apps promise to avoid clutter. How do they work, and are they reliable?

Mobile traffic information applications have today taken the place, for most GPS users, of dedicated units, and even of on-board navigation systems in certain vehicles. They are firstly based on a traffic history making it possible to determine, for example, a journey time during rush hour. Added to this is the collection of user data at several levels.

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The community asset

The service provider constantly analyzes the geolocation information of its customers to adjust its forecasts and possibly redirect motorists if a certain number of vehicles slow down downstream on an axis that is part of the planned route. In addition, most applications now allow users to self-report various obstacles to the flow of traffic as they pass. Driven by Waze, a subsidiary of Google which has thus become No. 1 in the sector, this collaborative operation is synonymous with responsiveness and therefore efficiency.

Waze app — It is possible to report events …

Motorway works — … such as work in progress on the track.

Apps with side effects

As efficient as the networks are, what application editors present as information in ” real time Is not quite. Thus an alternative route suggested by the application to avoid a traffic jam on a major axis can in turn be congested by software users, the time that these signal to the following the slowdown thus formed. During this time, the initial road that cleared is still indicated as congested by the app.

Empty highway — Sometimes the main track becomes clear and the alternate paths get congested.

This is what a study by the American University of Berkeley in 2018. Anti-traffic jam applications are therefore generally useful but can still be improved. Technological development, with 5G in mind, should make it possible to reduce their latency over the next few years. However, this could be accompanied by an increasingly intrusive collection of personal data.