Trafficmaster telematics gets you from A to B best
Trafficmaster is a UK-based company somewhat like OnStar, but much, much better. The Trafficmaster telematics system communicates directly with your satellite navigation system to give you the most up-to-date traffic information yet possible. This is achieved through communication from existing customers' Smartnav in-car navigation system which sends data on actual vehicle speed on its route, instead of relying on speed limits. This allows the system to know when there is a traffic jam, and when everybody is cruising at a good clip. With this information readily at hand, traffic flow can be optimized, saving time, fuel consumption and emissions.
As add-ons to Trafficmaster, Teletrac and Trackstar help keep track of specific vehicles - the former for commercial companies tracking their fleet vehicles, and the latter tracking your vehicle if it's stolen, and directly linking its data to the police for recovery. Nifty, huh?
[Source: Trafficmaster]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brett 4:10PM (5/31/2007)
Sure its "Nifty" if you like living in a nanny-state where police/government can increasingly encroach upon your personal information. Keep it in the UK. I'll never drive a car with this feature.
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Karkus 4:50PM (5/31/2007)
No need to worry about that coming to the US - it's already here. Apparently lots of people in the US are letting themselves be tracked by buying those toll road transponders (in addition to fleet vehicles, etc). Various companies and transportation agencies are using such data to create real time traffic maps (for example Google Maps Traffic).
Personally, I love those traffic maps.
In addition, most new cars have black boxes in them, tracking everything you do. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1223380,00.html
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Simon 3:40AM (6/01/2007)
A similar company called Dash are creating a GPS unit which works in much the same way. I think the difference is they are using mobile phone networks to allow cars to communicate information back to their service. See more at:
http://www.dash.net/
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Brett 10:15AM (6/01/2007)
Stand alone black boxes/event recorders are different than the service talked about here. I'm not infavor of either. It's one of the reasons why I drive older vehicles.
I'm pretty sure that those toll road transponders are just radio transmitters that only communicate when they are "talked" to by the toll booths. If they were transmitting continuously, how long do you think the battery in those things would last? Google maps probably just accesses data from the speed sensors embedded in the concrete in metropolitan areas.
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Chris M 6:41PM (6/03/2007)
The "toll booth transponders" like Fastpass are simple RFID devices without batteries. They are powered by the radio signal at the toll booth, and responds only to the correct signal with a simple ID response.
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