MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams

Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."

Seriously.

[Smidge204]

That Traffic James is a total dick. Constantly swerving between lanes and cutting people off. The faster they get him off the roads the better we'll all be.

(Headline currently reads "MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic James" - hope they fix that...)
=Smidge=

Re:Stop Traffic Jams

[SCHecklerX]

Actually, it's usually that impatient dick that passes on the right and then swerves back to the left, causing a ripple of red lights back for miles. It takes only one idiot like that to cause a jam.

Re:Traffic James?

[quonsar]

Microsoft Bob's cousin.

Avoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how are they gonna prevent the daily traffic jam on the Sunset Freeway here in Portland? It's the only freeway that goes west of downtown, from the largest city in Oregon (Portland) to the second largest city in Oregon (Beaverton). How is software going to prevent 30,000 cars from only having one way to go? Among the problems, are a tunnel that goes under a big ass ridge (and can't be expanded), the freeway itself being in a canyon so it can't be expanded without destroying Forest Park, and the downtown terminus being a completely ODOT-botched interchange with 405 that requires you to be in the proper lane a mile in advance, or you're going the wrong way.

Code around that one, cause most of the people driving it have tried every other route possible; and they're just as bad, if not worse:

W. Burnside / NW Barnes Rd.? Two lane tunnel restricting traffic. Lots of traffic signals. Also, the joy of driving on W. Burnside.
NW Lovejoy / NW Cornell? Two lanes, with "traffic calming." Oh, and you get to drive through the Pearl District, and dodge the slow-as-hell Streetcar.
SW Barbur Blvd. / Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy? Well, good luck getting through Hillsdale without tearing your steering wheel off, because the through lane is also the one that Tri-Met stops every 2 blocks in. Oh, and the lights at Scholls Ferry Rd. are always fun to sit at for 20 minutes.

ClearType Tuner, part of Windows XP PowerToys

[tepples]

If ClearType causes color fringing on your Gateway LCD, have you tried using ClearType Tuner, part of Windows XP PowerToys [microsoft.com], to configure ClearType? I know that out of the box, Windows ClearType assumes an RGB LCD panel, but a few LCD panels are BGR, or they have really weird gamma.

Re:Stop Traffic Jams

[jefu]

Of course they do - but even if you do speed up, they'll still tailgate you, and if you get out of the way and let them pass, they'll tailgate the person in front of you, then the person in front of them and so on.

Don't you realize? They're special, and their needs and wants trump all those of the people driving around them.

I'll usually try to get out of the way when I reach a break in the slower lane - or if they're particularly insistant, I'll slow down until I can merge right (US) safely, then move back to the faster lane when I get a chance.

The funny thing, of course, is that often enough if we're going to the same place they manage (over 5 miles or so) to get there and then get stuck at the same red light as me (a couple cars back).

But that counts, because they're special and everyone else should be (rightfully) subordinate to their desires.