August 30, 2007
The prescient TomTom
So here's what I'd like to see: the prescient TomTom. I was stuck on the A30 heading toward Exeter, and a crash closed the carriageway I was on for more than four hours. Cars were stacked up as we sat and waited for the accident to be cleared.
The accident happened no more than 2 minutes ahead of me, but of course the TomTom's traffic updates were not fast enough to get me off the A30 and onto the back roads. If only the TomTom could predict the future, it might say "don't go that route" or "travel the day before".
More realistically, I can see a valid use-case for satellite tracking in all vehicles (hello, big brother!), together with some weather monitoring and software that analyses traffic patterns to auto-detect crashes, or even to predict them. "It's raining, there's significant amounts of standing water, and these clowns are driving erratically at over 100mph, this route will be blocked shortly".
I'm beginning to think a teasmaid should be fitted to all cars, too. Oh, and I need to get an in-car power adapter for my laptop. And possibly a satellite phone, since mobile reception in the corners of the UK is still somewhat patchy to say the least.
Technorati Tags: cars, gis, gps, maps, mobile, tomtom, transport, travel
Posted by savs at August 30, 2007 9:21 PMHow does TomTom get its traffic alerts? I've found my car's built-in trafficmaster receiver has helped me to avoid jams a couple of times, although it goes mad in East Anglia, wittering about J40 of the M10 and other silly things.
Has anyone experienced TomTom support - it is simply awful. You wait at least 30 minutes to get anyone on the phone. The people on the phone are actually rude and they put you through endless hoops before you can return dead product.
With TomTom if anything goes wrong you are on your own.