Phone data track jams for iDrive

Sir: How does IDrive know when there are traffic slowdowns at intersections, interstate highways and other locations around the state? — Buller from Conway

Dear Buller: You refer to idrivearkansas.com, a production and service of the Arkansas Department of Transportation. The website has a map of the state with tons of information about road conditions, traffic congestion, weather, and ongoing construction.

The latter is our favorite. There are approximately 1.2 million road projects in progress. It’s a good thing to know about those when traveling.

Back to the question at hand. How does the website know about traffic slowdowns? A key on the map shows green highways as having normal traffic, orange as slow, red as very slow and maroon as stopped. (As Bugs Bunny used to say — “What a maroon!”)

Let’s first answer the question with another question. Have you seen the movie The Circle? It’s about a giant tech company — a mix of Apple and Facebook and Google — that aims to use digital technology to rule the world. And is doing a pretty good job of it. Scary stuff to those of us who are naturally paranoid.

An explanation of how this works, from Danny Straessle of the Transportation Department, made us think of The Circle. That’s how paranoia works, dudes.

Here is a summation of what Straessle told us.

The map on IDrive Arkansas is the same as the Google map that pops up on our mobile phones and on Google itself.

Several million users visit the site annually, and so Google requires the department to pay for use of the map, about $40,000 per year.

Google isn’t the only provider of such traffic data. Other vendors include Inrix, Microsoft Bing, and Nokia Here. The department compared services and found Google Traffic to be the most accurate regarding the time it takes to show on the map what’s happening on the highways. Google also provides information for all state highways in Arkansas, rather than only the major routes.

Yeah, sure, right, fine, OK — but how does it work?

Google accumulates data from a variety of sources to determine traffic flow. Some of those sources include telemetry data from long-haul trucking companies and anonymous data from mobile phones.

Aha! So exclaimed the paranoid.

Straessle said that in the latest operating system updates for Android and iPhone, the end-user license agreement requires users to acknowledge their phones send anonymous data to be used in determining how fast traffic is moving.

As if, the paranoid guy thought, anyone really reads those multitudinous end-user license agreements.

One more thing, Straessle said. When a user pulls up the IDrive map on a cellphone, a blue dot appears on the map to indicate the user’s location. That dot is not used to track people, he said. It’s there to show the user’s proximity to work zones, accidents and such.

Technology. It’s our friend.

Vanity plate seen on a small Volkswagen: UK SUV.