Google Maps, the popular navigation application, is preparing a new feature to combat the well-known “ghost traffic jams” that can waste time and cause frustration for drivers.
This phenomenon occurs when vehicles suddenly reduce their speed or even stop without any apparent cause on the road.
The engineers working on this feature, Neil Dhillon and Tanmay Wadhwa, explained that when a vehicle reduces its speed quickly on a busy road it can generate a series of chain reactions that result in traffic congestion, a traffic jam.
Thus, instead of simply detecting the sudden decrease in speed of several vehicles in a specific area, as current navigation systems do, Google Maps will use the speed of the first car to slow down to establish a speed limit for the vehicles. vehicles coming behind.
In this way, it is expected that thanks to the implementation of this limit there will be a significant impact on the reduction of traffic jams and the improvement of traffic fluidity and, therefore, these “ghost traffic jams” will disappear.
The idea behind this innovation is to allow drivers to maintain an adequate safe distance from each other while continuing to move forward, thus avoiding the creation of a domino effect that triggers a prolonged traffic jam.
However, this feature is still in development and it is unclear when it will be available to Google Maps users. Additionally, its effectiveness will largely depend on whether drivers follow the app’s suggested speed limits.