Gov App Detects Potholes As Your Drive Over Them 181
An anonymous reader writes "The City of Boston has released an app that uses the accelerometer in your smartphone to automatically report bumps in the road as you drive over them. From the article: 'The application relies on two components embedded in iPhones, Android phones, and many other mobile devices: the accelerometer and the Global Positioning System receiver. The accelerometer, which determines the direction and acceleration of a phone’s movement, can be harnessed to identify when a phone resting on a dashboard or in a cupholder in a moving car has hit a bump; the GPS receiver can determine by satellite just where that bump is located.' I am certain that this will not be used to track your movements, unless they are vertical."
Re:How exactly does it work? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't help but sound stupid, but how exactly can it detect when you've driven over a pot hole or are just shaking your phone up and down? Isn't this what road surveyors are for in the first place?
Correlation. Any single "bump" - not interesting. A dozen or so "bumps" with the same lat/long: Send an inspector to that location. Good chance you'll find a pothole (or a dead body) in the road....
Re:swerves? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree this smells of a developer that thinks they've come up with a great innovation that won't work in practice. I've used accelerometers in vehicle / equipment monitoring applications and unless the mechanical bonding is solid and/or known the results are practically useless. Especially with a phone where having it in your pocket while you adjust sitting position and any other number of things will possibly have a similar acceleration profile to hitting a pot hole.
They'd probably be better having a way to report things from a menu, then you could cover things like traffic lights out and other general traffic hazzards. Anyone that cared enough to run the app probably wouldn't mind pulling over in a safe spot, adjusting back the position from their current position and submitting a report. You could assign a "karma" to each user account to help prioritize and sift out asshats, and it would also remove any privacy concerns.
what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
I lived in metro-Boston for a long time (I moved away about a year ago), and my only question about this whole project is, "why?" The Mass DCR (Dept of Conservation & Resources) is legally free of any liability for damage to cars due to road disrepair, and it is clearly evident. Potholes deep enough to cause severe damage are common, and unless the DCR staff goes out of its way to avoid ever driving, there's no way they could be unaware of these. (That's hard to imagine, since the only organization more poorly run in the entire Boston area is the MBTA, operator of the public transit system.) You don't need a GPS to find the potholes, you just get in your car and drive, they'll find you. Just watch out when they do!
I suppose, in fairness, that this article is only referring to Boston proper, not the greater Boston area. Problem is, nobody lives in Boston. Most people live in Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Brighton, etc, etc. Maybe the roads in Boston will be great because of this, but everybody's car will be so trashed by the time they get there that it won't matter.
Gah. The SF Bay Area is fucked, but this really makes me not miss Boston!
Re:Okay.. so you know where a pothole is within 50 (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like your phone is using the cell tower for location instead of the GPS chip.
Civilian GPS should provide a worst case accuracy of ~8 meters at a 95% confidence level. [pnt.gov]