Dash Express - Traffic powered by the Dash Driver Network
One of the features that immediately gets people excited about Dash is our traffic solution. Dash approaches traffic in an entirely different way from a typical GPS device - by collecting traffic data from real people, driving real commute routes, during real commute times. Yes, we are literally crowdsourcing traffic data from our community of drivers, which we call the Dash Driver Network.
Here’s how the Dash Driver Network works:
- Each Dash Express anonymously and automatically sends its position and speed back to the Dash servers
- Dash also receives traffic info from road sensors, commercial fleets and other sources through our partnership with Inrix
- Dash then calibrates these sources against “ground truth” provided by the Dash devices actually driving the roads every day
- Dash then sends out updates to all of the Dash devices in the area with current road speeds
While crowd sourcing of traffic data is pretty revolutionary, I am most excited by the fact that we have designed our traffic service to automatically learn from all the Dash drivers out on the road. Every time a Dash device is used we are calibrating data from our partners, we are building our historic traffic database, we are dynamically adjusting our live traffic models, and most importantly, we gather all this data and share it out with every other Dash user. Even when I am not using my Dash device, the Dash traffic solution is learning from every other user and I am benefiting from their driving… that is pretty powerful!
I am often asked “how many units do you need in an area to get good traffic data?” In answering that question I start by explaining the “first customer in a new market” experience. The good news is that even if you are the first Dash user in a metropolitan area, you are going to have a best in class traffic experience since our partner Inrix provides us traffic flow information for over 100 metropolitan areas in the United States (Note: while Inrix provides us data for over 100 markets, the Dash traffic solution is nationwide, so you will always have traffic data from other Dash drivers even if you are in a market not covered by Inrix).
To give you a feeling of what the first consumer experience is like in a city, we captured a screen shot in St. Louis before any Dash devices were in the city, and you can see that users will still get live traffic data on all the major highways in the area:
Now, to answer the question of “how many units do you need to get good traffic data?”. Dash Express users will begin to see the benefits of the Dash Driver Network with only a few devices in a given market. This is all it takes for the system to start learning. And every additional device in the area just makes the network better. For an averaged sized metropolitan area it takes just a few hundred units for the Dash Driver Network to provide live up-to-the-minute data for most major roads during commute hours. For a larger metropolitan area like Washington D.C. (the 8th largest metropolitan area in the US) it takes only about 1,000 units for the Dash Driver Network to provide live up-to-the-minute data for most major roads during commute hours. Meaning that the majority of traffic is coming from Dash drivers, not our partners.
Another unique feature of our traffic offering is that we track traffic conditions on more than just highways. Unlike any other solution, we track traffic conditions on highways, major arterials, minor arterials, and even smaller neighborhood roads, all across the country, not just in major cities.
So we have built a lot of intelligence into our live traffic data solution, but we didn’t stop there. Every Dash device ships with historic traffic models for every major metropolitan area in the US, not just for highways… all the way down to those smaller neighborhood roads. Dash learns how fast every road segment you drive historically moves for every 15 minute time segment for every day of the week. We don’t assume traffic at 8:30am on Monday is similar to 8:30am on Tuesday, or even 8:45am Monday (just 15 minutes later). We use this historic data in a number of ways, and one of them is in calculating how long it will take to traverse surface streets given what time of day it is. As we learn about all the surface streets in your metropolitan area our ETAs will improve because we will be better able to predict how long it takes to get across town at various times of the day.
We have spent a lot of time figuring out how to visually show all this great traffic data on the device. The Dash Express allows you to visualize current traffic conditions by color around your location on both major and secondary roads: stop-and-go traffic is red, moderate congestion is orange, mild congestion is yellow, and free-flowing roads are green.
If lines are solid, they represent live traffic derived from the Dash Driver Network (this means the data is either from an actual Dash driver or we have calibrated and verified the third party data we get for this road segment). If dashed, the traffic data is either third party sensor or historical data. As the Dash Driver Network grows in your area you’ll see more and more of the dashed lines become solid.
Here is a screen shot of traffic in the Los Angeles area, where we have had only about 40 testers. Notice that with only 40 testers most of the data is derived from the Dash Driver Network:
Here is a screen shot of Washington D.C. where we have had only about 20 testers. Again note how much of the data is derived from the Dash Driver Network:
Now let’s look at traffic on surface streets. Here is a screen shot of our arterial traffic data in Los Angeles at 3:51pm on Friday March 7th. It really is incredible how much data is collected by a limited number of drivers in an area.
As you can probably tell, I am really excited about our traffic solution. We know that the solution won’t be perfect on day one, and that is why we have invested so heavily in building a solution that truly learns and harnesses the collective experience of all our Dash drivers. I hope some of you are going to join the Dash Driver Network and help everyone in the network fight traffic!
March 18th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
This is the article I’ve been waiting for. Just coolness. And at my age, I don’t use the word, “cool,” too much, anymore.
This could put traffic helicopters out of business.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:25 am
This is the feature I’m most excited about, though I’m still unsure I can afford to be an early adopter.
I’d assume that even if you’re the only person in your city with a Dash, over a few weeks the unit may help you discover faster alternate routes to common trips (i.e. to work), especially if you live and work in a city where there are dozens of ways to get from point A to point B.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Mark - Awsome info. Thank you
March 19th, 2008 at 7:54 am
This and dynamic lookups are what will set the DE apart from the rest.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:19 am
What more will I be able to do with this? Can I go on-line (w/o dash) and figure out what is the best way between two places at a certain time? I.e monday at 8 am on this date? what is the expected best route? What about what time should I leave between 8 am and 10 am on monday would get me the shortest trip using what route? I’m very excited by this technology and curious what you will do with all this data?
March 19th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Nice piece of marketing but it is not difficult for anyone to torpedo this story. Hundreds of research projects were performed related to this topic and didn´t even come close to what is being claimed here. Claiming 10 or even 10.000 live cars can generate traffic in a metropole simply doesn´t make sense but let´s wait and sse.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
@Fred Z
There are two aspects to Dash’s approach which make it different.
1. It combines the live data with Inrix. This means at the very *worst*, it will still be better than every other GPS device or traffic website out there.
2. All the data it uses from the Dash Network isn’t “live”. The *historical* data helps Dash overcome the limitation of not having 100,000 live cars in the area at any given time and really gives them a unique look at the traffic problems of any given area.
I like what I see thus far. Given the technology that is available today, the Dash Express (in terms of traffic) is really above and beyond anything we’ve seen before.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
In terms of privacy, I was just wondering — so, say I’m the only one in my area with a Dash. Therefore, there would be solid lines as to where I travelled. Would people be able to see the sideroads I take, leading to where I live? If all at once the solid line becomes dotted on a sidestreet, would that be any indication of where the Dash would be powered off?
March 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
@Fred
Fred, I love it when people stand up with good information, but you obviously didn’t bother to read or you cannot even comprehend pictures. Picture number 1 shows that level of data that can be achived with approx 40 users. Pic 2 shows data retieved from approx 20 users. Out of the hundreds of researches you are claiming, please just give us one that disputes what you are seeing. Looks like Dash just rendered hundreds of researches pointless.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Believe me, I read the story from A to Z, I have been involved deeple in this subjects for many years and it is also not that hard to comprehence the pictures
But if you want to believe that Dash just renened hundreds of researches pointless…be my guest..good luck…and have fun living the dream 
Still, I must admit, Dash is giving the PND market a good push.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
@steve thats a very good question never thought of that!
March 19th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Steve, If you “are the only one in your area with a Dash”, then there would be no one with a Dash to see the sideroads that you take
Nevertheless, still a valid question…
March 20th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Interesting. But even though they may “know” where you live by the traffic lines, why would your house be more of a target (presuming we’re talking of a potential illegal act on the dash user) than say any other house the bad guy drives by. Granted it is a bit creepy, but there is no other “personal” information (that I’m aware of) being given out by the dash unit. So unless the bad guy wants another dash unit to his collection, I wouldn’t worry about it. Clarification about this from dash would be appreciated though.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Will there be a post on how the dash plans routes?
Can you upload a route you’d like to take instead of what the dash recommends?
Can you enter various poi’s and have the dash route the poi’s in order?
Can you choose what to avoid (tolls, highways, back roads, etc?)
Thanks
March 20th, 2008 at 6:27 am
@nday hmm maybe a cheating spouse can be tracked by the traffic data it reports to itself….just killing time till launch
March 20th, 2008 at 6:29 am
RE: Security. I was thinking the same thing myself, but came to the conclusion that Dash isn’t responsible for my security: I am. There are precautions I must take, depending on how severe I think the risk. And without the device to experiment with, it’s a little difficult to do any kind of risk assessment. Bottom line is when I first use the DEx, it won’t be on when I’m in my neighborhood. (That will be a difficult temptation to overcome!)
March 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I’m not too worried about where I live, since it’s in a larger area. But if I visit my parents who live in more of a rural area, and off of a few sidestreets, it’d be pretty obvious that a Dash user was there by the solid line, and suddenly stopping halfway down a particular street. Just a curiosity question…
March 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Let me start by addressing the privacy issues. It is effectively IMPOSSIBLE for dash users to determine where other dash users live. It is impossible for two reasons. First, we don’t track traffic data on the minor neighborhood roads that the vast majority of people in the US live on, because there really isn’t much traffic on these roads to speak of. This means that your last “solid line” would be on some larger road that generally has traffic, but not on the street you live on, so no ability to pin point where you live. The second reason that it is impossilbe for dash users to determine where other dash users live is that we only show traffic data on an entire “road segment”. Think of a “road segment” as the stretch of road between two intersections. This means that if happen to live on a road that we do collect traffic data on you will never see a line that stops at your home. So it really is effectively impossible to pin point where other dash users live.
@stu - every dash owner has an account on MyDash, which is our web portal for customers. Today that is where you can access a number of features like Send2Car and the ability to get custom data on your device. While we don’t comment on future functionality, we do think we have a chance to answer questions that nobody else answers today, like the ones you listed.
@Fred - we have multiple PhDs in traffic on our staff and some of the leading navigation experts in the world, so we have a staff that is familar with traffic research and having used the product extensively I can tell you it is a pretty powerful system.
@nday - I will try and get to a post on how we generate routes. Currently you can’t upload a route to the device. You can enter multiple custom points into the device and route to them one by one, but we don’t support multiple way points on a trip. We currently don’t have avoid / prefer settings in our routing system, but we will be adding these with an over the air software update in the future.
March 20th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Thanks, Mark!
March 20th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Will Dash provide the traffic data collected by its customers to any third party, such as Inrix?
March 20th, 2008 at 10:31 am
@Rob B - Currently the traffic data produced by our users is only used to power the Dash Driver Network
March 20th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Mark - Thanks for the update! What I would I really like to see is some real world comparisions between current traffic enabled GPS devices and Dash. That would sell me right now!
- Stu
March 20th, 2008 at 10:52 am
This is awesome, thanks for the information.
I was wondering if it’s possible to get a general idea of the number of people who have pre-ordered in a given market. I live around Washington, DC, so I loved the screen shot, but I’m wondering if we already have 40 users, about how many could be expected in the next few weeks.
Thanks!
+Tom
March 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
@Tom - we currently do not plan on releasing market by market sales data. I think you can understand the competitive reasons why we don’t want to do that.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
@Tom. There’s an unofficial database with this information at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dashnavigation/. Entering the data is purely voluntary and has no added value gained from any formal or informal association with the company.
Hope to see you there!
March 20th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
@Rob B.
I tried to join that group and was denied
I even said “I found you guys on the Dash blog!”
March 21st, 2008 at 11:05 am
It’s disappointing that you’re saying that Dash will not be useful on smaller streets. Granted, the definition of “smaller streets” is up in the air, but in the places I need to drive the most (Providence, Newport) what I really need is the best routing aroun the city, not just whether or not there is a traffic jam on Route 95.
Unless Dash is going to colect and give traffic data on every street, it’s definitely not worth the money for me.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
“minor neighborhood roads” != “smaller streets”
Have faith
March 21st, 2008 at 6:36 pm
What happens if someone has to stop and fix a flat? How does the system distinguish between a car slowing down because of traffic and for some other reason (site seeing for instance).
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I want my DE to do everything all the time and always know what I am thinking before I know, NEVER get me stuck in traffic oh and I would like accident prediction as well. thanks Mark
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
@Ken - we are able to filter “outliers” out of the traffic data as needed.
@MattS - we will work on neural implant and future prediction algorithms right away
Glad all you pre-order folks like the splitter. I have found those splitters to be invaluable (then again I typically am driving with multiple nav systems running at once).
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:24 am
The local road feature is of great importance in places like DC and NYC. e.g. - Yesterday I took a new-to-me route from Mapquest to a familiar destination. I checked the traffic report for the route via Mapquest’s link (don’t know who their provider is), which showed all good with a couple slow spots - a reasonable possibility on a Sunday.
The highways were in fact moving smoothly, right up to the exit I needed. That’s the last exit before a bridge, no there was no 2nd choice once it is reached. The exit lane and it’s immediate outlet added up to a 1/2 hour backup. The traffic report didn’t see that, since 2 lanes of the highway were clear - the stalled traffic was in the 2 right lanes queueing to exit, plus a bit of the local roads after the exit.
That’s a common occurence here and one you’d be blind to with online traffic. A radio traffic report might have called out the exit to he-l-l but you’ll never see it on the web.
So… I’m hoping the Dash team will put this scenario into their functional specs. It’s common and can really trash your schedule.
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Not sure if they address this specific problem but from what I have seen the DE gives 3 possible routes when you plug in a destination based on current real time traffic. You then choose the route you want. I cant wait to get this thing in my truck the always on has me giddy like a school boy..On that note
Mark@ how does dash handle hand off from Wi-Fi to the GSM networks or vise versa?? Or does it just open seprate data connections without a handoff?
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
@Matt S - we seamlessly handle the transition from WiFi to the cellular network. The user doesn’t have to do anything at all… other than saying that I don’t want to say too much for competitive reasons
March 24th, 2008 at 6:12 am
UMA?
March 24th, 2008 at 7:26 am
The main article on the traffic info was very informative. Thanks.
Two Questions: (1) You describe the color coding as dashed/solid lines of green/yellow/amber/red. Your sample screen shots also show what appears to be a solid dark blue or black line on some segments; what does this signify? (2) I live in Charlotte NC, and am slated with a March 27 ship date. Your web site shows Dash coverage for this area as “coming soon.” Will there be coverage here when I receive my unit? If not, then what is the timing?
March 24th, 2008 at 8:57 am
@Mark Digging deeper I find that Dash has really done some great things that should keep your device on top for a while. Not taking away from what is being done it seems the DE is a GSM phone with a SUPER GPS chip, 1973 was great year!!
I see a reverse approach most makers are GPS devices adding real time data with one way receivers, Dash is a Cell device with added GPS device functionality…alot more to it but thats the simple take NICE MOVE!
March 24th, 2008 at 10:06 am
@Chris I’m not an authority here at all but my GUESS would be no traffic data available at that time for those segments for what ever reason. As to the coverage do you have TMO available in your area? From what I have been able to guess at it looks like Dash has chosen Tmo as a third party provider for their Data network. There are a number of things that are really good about that, star bucks has WiFi and if there is the ability to roam from GSM to WiFi the possibility’s of getting onto TMO’s hot spots is there. The Calipso chipset offers some real cool Gsm/wifi integration possibilities. That coupled with the “open source” linux/OpenMoko platform has put Dash in a postion to offer alot of possible solutions for the market. The possibilities with their device are amazing just the commercial applications make my head spin!!
March 24th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
@Rob — Sorry you were denied access to the Yahoo Group. I haven’t denied anyone intentionally, so I must’ve fat fingered it. Please try again.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
@Mark
You mentioned that the traffic data used to calculate routes will include live data from sources like Inrix and road sensor data. Does this mean that if something (like an accident, or lane closures) out of the ordinary happens in the course of a day, we would be notified about it (of course, dependent on how quickly data like that is reflected from live sources) and routed around it, correct? Will there be a special section in the GPS software that lets us view such traffic “events”?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
@Chris - I assume you are talking about the “grey lines” that represent the road… if you aren’t just point me to the picture you are referring to. I am happy to report that we are live with our coverage in the NC / SC area… so you are good to go!
@HansH - The way our traffic alerts work is that if after selecting your route, if there is a significant incremental slow down above what we showed you when you selected the route, we give you a traffic alert and route you around it. Right now we don’t show “incident data” on the device, but we are actively working on adding this type of info to the device.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Mark,
I am moving to LA and plan on buying a Dash as soon as I move there. I loved the above article, but I have a few questions as to how it actually works in calculating a route. Sorry if I missed something!:
1. When my Dash calculates a route, I know it takes into account historical data for that road and time, but can you tell me how this information interacts with live traffic data? So, I would like to know how Dash weighs these three items: a) historical data, b) Live traffic info from the road sensors, c) live traffic data from other Dash users.
2. Lets say I am driving down a highway for 30 miles. A Dash user 15 miles ahead slows down to a stop because of an accident. Do I find that out somehow on my Dash unit? Will it reroute me?
3. (This is related to #1 and #2) Does Dash actually use live traffic info from sensors and Dash users, or does it just take that data and build “models” which it then uses to build routes. It seems hard for that much info to be taken into account “live” both by the individual Dash unit and by any computer system trying to do that for the entire nation.
I hope you can figure out what I am asking! Thanks! I have been telling all of my friends about Dash and hope it lives up to all the great potential it has!
Seth
March 25th, 2008 at 11:33 am
@seth -
Not an expert here, but from what I think I know concerning the first part of your question; Dash weighs live traffic from Dash users the heaviest, as this information is live. they also indicate this by the line with NO dashes on the map. All other traffic data is indicated with Dashes on the map as indicating a lower confidence in the data. Hope that helps you some. Someone please correct me if I am mislead.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
How fine is the resolution on a particular road? I just got off a highway (it’s 12am now) which shows all green on traffic.com. You’d think you could about fly into the city. You’d be late - there’s a mile long backup because of night construction in one direction, and whateer Traffic.com uses (Navteq?) can’t see that small a segnment.
Can Dash resolve a short section of stopped traffic along a free-flowing road?
The more I look at actual roads vs internet traffic reports the more I see cases where the technology does not understand or perhaps does not have granular enough data for the physical reality it’s attempting to model.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
@Seth - As I hope you can see, we have tried really hard to talk about the details of our product, but there are some areas of the product that we won’t really dive into for competitive reasons, and your set of questions around our routing fall into that category for now. I hope you understand.
I am comfortable answering your question around a dash driver in front of you getting stuck in traffic. If a dash driver gets slowed down, or we learn of a slow down from our partner Inrix, you will be alerted to the slow down assuming it materially impacts your travel time. Meaning, if the slow down will only impact you by a minute we won’t alert you, if it is longer, like 5 minutes, you will get a traffic alert and you will have the option of picking a new route.
In terms of our usage of data, we use both data from Inrix and our live devices in our traffic solution. It is a lot of data flowing around at all times of the day, so it wasn’t an easy thing for our engineers to build, but we were able to do it for the entire country!
@Larry - Our resolution is what we call “road segments”, which is the stretch of road between two “decision points”. For example, the stretch of road between two highway exits is a road segment for us. The stretch of road between two intersections on an arterial is a road segment. Therefore we get pretty granular in our data. Hopefully you can see this granularity in some of the screen shots above.
Mark
March 25th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
@Seth -
I don’t work for dask, but I can comment on using live data. It’s not that hard to do; all the roads can be divided into segments and each segment is part of a database record. Traffic condition is probably handled as part of a db record, so existing technology easily handles writing and reading millions of records.
In other words… the system _can_ track all the live data. It doesn’t need to ‘think’ about all the traffic data flooding in; it only needs to write each datum into the right place.
Then, (I’m guessing) your Dash unit grabs all the traffic data for the general area off the air, and asks for more when needed. If you ask it for a route from Maine to Mexico, it would ask for all the traffic data along the way and calculate your route. YOUR route is calculated by your own Dash, so there’s no problem with computing power. Worst case, you’d have to wait a few seconds for a route to be computed.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:32 am
@ Mark - I understand about the proprietary nature of some of the inner workings of the Dash unit and database - no worries about keeping some of that private. In fact, when I buy a Dash I will want you guys to dominate the marked and get as many units as you can out there! Thank you for answering what you could.
@Larry and dashless - thanks for your answers also. I am not a computer programmer so when I thought about a small GPS unit trying to crunch live data, historical data, and road sensors - it all seemed to much for me and I worried that all one could do is use sensor data and live data to build models that are then downloaded to Dash units every once in a while. That system would not be impressive. It is encouraging to hear that a “live” system is possible and happening in the Dash units.
Looking forward to getting one and telling more of my friends about this new technology!
March 30th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I was searching for \’Direction Driving Travel Yahoo\’ at google and got this your post (\’Dash Express - Traffic powered by the Dash Driver Network\’) in search results. Not very relevant result, but still interesting to read
March 31st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Just a couple quick questions :
I live in an area that uses HOV lanes extensively. There are many times where the HOV lane is flowing freely while all the other lanes are stop and go. How will dash handle this? When I’m driving alone I would like to see if it is going to take forever — but conversely in the morning I carpool and would like if dash were able to know that somehow.
I can see that you could easily have 2 dash users that give conflicting info. One is stopped and the other is zooming along. The second question is that some of the HOV lanes are shared in both directions and flip in direction of traffic flow - or even are closed - depending on time of day. How will dash handle this?
Curious
March 31st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
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April 5th, 2008 at 7:49 am
As an adjunct data collector option, it would be great to be able to come across an incident/accident while on the road, tap the screen twice, and be presented with a menu of traffic anomaly entry options (flat tire, accident, police, fire incident). You would then tap the one that applies and then send the location,time and type to your servers. That would be cool and very helpful.
Waddaya think?
Bruce
April 5th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Hello webmaster My name is Megan, and I have been searching the web in regards to Current Traffic for what seems like ages now. Its really nice to know that someone out there is really writing great articles about Current Traffic. I\’ll be back to read other articles you have. Signed this day (Saturday).
May 11th, 2008 at 2:46 am
wuohs
May 27th, 2008 at 2:04 am
the idea of dash is great, but working with navigation and LBS, we have discovered that the real benefits of traffic information isn’t all that great (it might make you feel better though) for the following reasons:
1. a person that i.e. commutes usually doesn’t have 100 alternatives, but just 1,2 that make sense and often only for a small part of the route. so the system might give you alternatives but these alternatives don’t really show that much of a difference when it comes to how much time is needed.
2. there is a dynamic in traffic: if there are not too many dash and dash-information users, it might work. but as soon as a good % of the people use dash information, the system will show to thousands of people similar routes that are at the time of showing relatively empty but which will quickly be filled with those people taking the alternative.
many tests have been performed with online traffic data. i live in Seoul where we have a very dense network of cameras and also taxis that have a system like dash. tests have been performed with offline navigation and dash like systems to find out that on 30 min driving, the online dash styled navigation gives about 1 min. of savings on average.
i think dash is great but more for the open API to offer a vast sea of online applications …