And why does it always seem to under-estimate my commute time?
In: Engineering
Most mapping software these days will be aware of what the speed limit on every road is between you and your destination. From there, its partially just math. You want to get to your destination as quickly as possible and so it will calculate several different routes to your destination, figure out the average speed across that path based on speed limits, and return whichever route gets you there fastest. This wont always be the shortest path, since the shortest path might involve driving through slow neighborhoods instead of major arterial roads.
It is also aware of every route every user has taken through their app and how long that trip took. This is how it can do traffic detection. If there’s a lot of people using there maps moving slowly through an area, theres probably a traffic jam. It can use this aggregated data to give better estimates than just pure speed limits since most drivers aren’t going the speed limit anyways.
If your always taking longer to get to your destination, its likely that you are a defensive driver who tends to drive at or below the speed limit.
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