Re:SF Yellow Cab to file for bankruptcy
by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday January 06, 2016 @05:33PM
(#10854399)
You can probably buy GPS data for travel between any two given locations that will indicate the most popular routes and how long they took - from cellphone companies, Google and the like? Do driver routing companies (deliveries, taxis and such) do this to discover implied optimal routes?
In theory this is possible. In practice, it's clearly not commonly done as Apple, Google, etc. will merrily send you into notorious traffic jams, unprotected turns against heavy traffic, etc. even in major cities will millions of users.
It seems like Google might be getting slightly better now that they're pulling in Waze but I have seen little reason to believe that this is at all widespread.
There's a particular brand of driving that feels like "Only barely keeping it together because of the GPS" that's a little uncomfortable.
A confident driver with some slick shortcuts can be a really fun experience.