During a cross country trip, I keyed in a destination that was 2 hours away, through both urban and rural areas and through varying levels of rush hour traffic. I know they have ways of measuring instantaneous traffic levels, but how can they predict road conditions for multi-hour journeys?
In: 8
The short answer is data… Collecting data on many trips at many times in many circumstances, plus constantly collecting data on current traffic and current events such as road obstructions.
Where you see the accuracy drop is when you drive faster or slower than average. My boyfriend is a bit of an aggressive and zippy driver, so he almost always arrives a few minutes ahead of the estimate.
Side note: This is why Google maps stays so dominant in the realm of mapping and trip planning. The more it builds features and accuracy through data collection, the harder it gets for other app to compete. Every day is another day of data that Google has which a new app wouldn’t. They’ve spent millions of dollars to develop Google maps and I’m actually not sure if they’ve made any profit yet, they definitely ran Google maps at a loss for a long time. But they knew that investing in Google maps early would make it nearly impossible to compete with.
Sorry, I made the short answer long..
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