UC Berkeley and Nokia Monitor Highway Traffic

Researchers from UC Berkeley joined forces with Nokia in an experiment designed to help transform the way drivers negotiate congested roadways.

With the aid of the GPS enabled Nokia N95, 100 research cars navigated highway near San Francisco and collected real-time information on the traffic conditions which was then relayed using location reading software.

Before you cry big brother, fear not, the technique used maintains the privacy of participating vehicles, automatically encoding the data and adding it anonymously to the data stream.

The technology could function with as few as 5% of drivers participating and give an accurate estimate of expected travel times without sacrificing privacy. So its time to start thinking of better excuses for missing that big meeting.