More than 145 car models available in North America–about 43 percent–now integrate real-time traffic on full-screen navigation systems, according to new data from Navteq, the digital map and traffic company. (Navteq claims it powers the data from 90 percent of those systems).
This also mirrors the growth of real-time traffic in portable navigation devices (PNDs) like the TomTom 340-S LIVE and the Garmin nuvi 1690, as well as cell phone apps like AT&T Navigator for the iPhone and Google Maps Navigation for Android.
The next step: making these traffic reports much more accurate. As it stands, across dozens of GPS and cell phone app reviews, I’ve seen about a 30 to 50 percent accuracy rate for individual traffic jams. More often than not, a device with real-time traffic will report congestion ahead when there is none, report nothing when there is a jam, or otherwise interfere with a programmed route to avoid a jam that may or may not exist.
Basically, there aren’t enough sources of data. This is a problem across all GPS vendors. Having the real-time data helps, obviously, but for now, take it with a grain of salt.
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