Real-Time Street View

The Nexar Live Map is an interactive map of near real-time street view level imagery. Using the map you can explore New York City as portrayed in the latest dash cam images from the Nexar network.

Nexar's dash cam system uses AI technology to automatically detect and record incidents on the road. The system is designed to detect collisions and road delays in real-time and use this information to provide real-time alerts to Nexar users. It now also communicates that information in New York on a near real-time interactive map.

The Nexar Live Map has launched initially just in New York. In the coming months other cities will be added to the map. When you click on a location on the map you can view all the latest dash cam images which have been captured by the Nexar network around that location. This means that you can view street level imagery of locations which have been taken in just the last few hours. Each of the dash cam images available are shown on the map using categorized map markers. The type of marker is determined by Nexar's image detection AI. These markers indicate detected traffic signs, road blockages and traffic lights.

You can read more about the launch of the Nexar Live Map on the Nexar Blog.

UK Car Accidents Mapped

The Co-op's Car Accidents Map can help you plan a UK driving route and tell you the number of collisions that tool place along the route in 2016. The map uses data from the Department of Transport to show you where collisions have taken place on the UK's roads.

The car routing engine used in the Car Accidents Map doesn't take into account the number of collisions along the route. In other words it won't necessarily show you the safest route. It just maps one possible route and tells you the distance, estimated driving time and the number of collisions along that route.

The map does show every collision last year in the UK for every route you search. This means you can manually check the proposed route and try to work out a safer route for yourself. The map would definitely be more useful if it included an option to search for safer routes. Perhaps the map should include a warning that the route shown isn't necessarily the safest route. I definitely assumed when first using the map that it would automatically try to route me around hazard hotspots.



This is the second interactive map for car drivers that the co-op has released this year. In August Co-op Insurance also released an interactive map to help UK car drivers see where vehicle crime is most frequent.

Enter your location into Park Smart and you can view the location of nearby car crimes that have occurred in the last six months. Numbered and scaled markers show the number of car crimes reported at each location. It is therefore possible to quickly identify roads and blocks which experience high or low levels of car crime.

As well as the interactive map Co-op Insurance has released some handy tips for parking your car safely. Such as parking with your wheels facing the kerb to deter car thieves looking for a quick getaway.

Live Traffic with Mapbox

You can now add live traffic conditions to your Mapbox Maps. Mapbox Studio users now have access to two new preset map styles - both of which show live traffic conditions.

The two traffic condition styles are called Traffic Day and Traffic Night. Traffic Day shows traffic conditions on top of a light streets basemap while Traffic Night shows traffic on top of a dark streets basemap. You can preview the results of showing traffic on top of a dark streets basemap on this quick demo map.

In Mapbox Studio you can adjust how traffic congestion appears on your maps. The congestion field has four values: 'low', 'moderate', 'heavy' and 'severe'. By default traffic congestion use a color-ramp from green to red to show low-severe congestion. In Mapbox Studio you can change these colors to anything you want. You can even use different color-ramps for traffic conditions on different classes of road.

Mapping Toronto Traffic

The Toronto Star has mapped the volume of vehicle and pedestrian traffic at intersections throughout Toronto. Using data from the City of Toronto Transportation Services the map shows pedestrian and vehicle traffic over 24 hours (the data for each intersection was captured between 1999 and 2012).

The Toronto Intersections map consists of three main layers. A minimalist street map layer shows only the city's roads using thin white lines. Omitting the road names from the map means that The Star is relying on users being able to recognize the city's roads purely from the street pattern. This is a reasonable assumption to make when the paper's readers are local citizens. You can also mouse-over the markers on the map to view the names of the intersecting roads.

The minimalist style of street map layer means that the vehicle and pedestrian traffic data layers clearly stand out on the map. The scale of the circular markers on the map represent the volume of traffic at the marked intersection. Click on a marker and you can view both the vehicle and pedestrian numbers recorded at the selected intersection.

Reel-Time Traffic

Wegbeeld is a map of traffic conditions on the Netherlands' motorway network. The map allows you to replay the last three hours of traffic on the whole network. So you might say that this map includes reel-time as well as real-time traffic conditions.

The map includes an estimation on the current CO2 emissions being generated by all the cars on the Netherlands' motorways. The estimation is calculated based on the amount of traffic and the average speed of all the cars on the road.

The use of an animated road layer works really well in highlighting the important data on the map.   The map itself is derived from PDOK, the Dutch governments digital maps and geodata department.

Via: Visual Loop

UK Floods - Road Closures

If you are planning on driving anywhere in the UK this weekend then you may want to take a look at Roadworks.org before setting out on your journey.

Roadworks.org brings together information from utility companies and local authorities to provide a Google Map of current road works, road closures, diversions and traffic congestion. Because of the current flooding in the UK there are a lot of road closures in operation this weekend, particularly in the Bridgwater and Maidenhead areas.

Roadworks.org shows where roads are currently closed due to the flooding and also shows you diversion routes, where they are available.

One Thousand Car Crashes Mapped

When driving in Switzerland it is best to avoid the east entrance to the Gubrist tunnel on the Zurich bypass. According to the Swiss Crash Map the tunnel entrance is the most dangerous location in the country for car drivers, with over 200 accidents.

The Swiss Crash Map is a Google Map of all 108,640 Swiss road accidents in 2011 and 2012. The map not only helps users identify accident blackspots by location it also includes filters to explore the data by time of day, by day of the week, by severity and by the type of vehicles involved.

If you zoom in on the map you can click on individual accidents on the map to view details of the accident. An information panel also gives an overview of the total number of casualties in the current map view and a pie chart provides an overview on the percentages of male and female drivers involved in the traffic accidents. As you pan and zoom the map the panel and pie chart automatically updates the data to show the casualty total for the current view.

The map also makes good use of polygon masking to highlight Switzerland on the map and mask out the rest of the world. If you want to copy this feature you can use Geomask to define an area on a map and create your own polygon mask with the Google Maps API.

Scottish Traffic on Google Maps

Scotland's Transport Department are using the Google Maps API to provide Scottish drivers with the latest information on driving conditions, road closures and  traffic delays.

The Traffic Scotland map contains a number of useful layers that can be overlaid on the map. These include, current and planned road works, current incidents and traffic jams, weather conditions and traffic cams.

Real-time Spanish Traffic Conditions

Tuitrafico is a Spanish website that provides traffic updates for all of Spain and also provides information on the latest prices being offered at gas stations.

Tuitrafico uses Google Maps to display the current traffic conditions using information from the DGT (Dirección General de Tráfico) and Trafikoa (Basque Country). The map also contains the locations of traffic webcams. Drivers can therefore click on the webcam map markers and view the latest traffic conditions themselves in real-time.

In addition Tuitrafico also displays information about Spanish gas station prices (more than 8000, updated daily), weather alerts and advice on road safety. Users can select the Gasolineras tab above the map to view the location of gas stations throughout the country. If they select an individual gas station on the map they can view the latest prices for gas at that station.

London Olympic Lanes on Google Maps

Today in the UK 170 miles of roads are affected by the introduction of the Olympic Road Network (ORN). For the duration of the Olympics some roads now include Games Lanes that can not be used by normal road users. Other roads have been closed and certain roads will be subject to temporary closure during cycling road races and the marathon event.

In order to help minimise the disruption caused by the Olympic Road Network a Google Map has been created that displays all the changes made to the road network (although I notice that the road closed at the end of my street for the duration of the Olympics isn't on the map).

The Temporary Road Changes Map includes a time-line so it is possible to check for temporary closures that will only be in force during certain game events, such as the cycling and marathon.

Google Maps Gets More Traffic

Google Maps has added live traffic conditions in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Mexico, Peru, Romania and South Africa.

As well as introducing traffic conditions in these 7 new countries Google has also improved and expanded coverage to more roads in 19 countries and regions, where traffic data is already available; the countries include: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the UK.

This Google Map shows you where live traffic conditions is now available. 

Traffic Alerts on Google Maps

During this year‟s floods in Victoria, Australia almost 400 roads were closed across the state. A number of road bridges were also washed away. This experience has encouraged the state to invest $924,000 in a new real-time traffic alert system.

At the heart of the new system, VicRoads - Road Closures and Traffic Alerts, is a real-time Google Map of road closures, crashes and breakdowns.

During major emergencies such as fires or floods the map will include information about all road closures. It also provides traffic alert information during non-emergency times for incidents such as crashes and breakdowns.

Via: All Things Spatial

Live Traffic for 13 European Countries

Google Maps has added live traffic information for 13 new European countries.

The live traffic layer on Google Maps shows traffic conditions from the last 5-10 minutes. It is also possible to view the predicted traffic conditions for any day and time, based on past traffic conditions.

The new countries with traffic information coverage are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.

Via: Google LatLong

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