Google Maps meets Traffic.com crash ups?
If you don't drive frequently gridlock roadways, you may not care much about Traffic.com. If you never leave your house, having a mapping service like Google Maps may not help you find your way from the refrigerator to the bedroom closet. For the rest of us who live in traffic congested regions of the country and bravely venture onto the streets during those drive times of the early morning and late afternoon hours, a recent mashup-up of Yahoo's Traffic.com and Google Maps pinpoint the high traffic areas in most urban areas. Greg Sadetsky, creator of the Google-Yahoo traffic mapping overlap, demonstrated some of the features from the Where 2.0 stage. One thing he illustrates is the geo-locations of accidents at any given snapshot in time. What I want to see long term is a map that shows geo-locations of accidents over time. Having historic data would help show some of the more dangerous areas to drive and either offer warnings of upcoming high risk areas or help make better informed decisions about improving roadways over time. I'm sure much of this data is already available somewhere, it's just not readily usable because we're all swamped with too much information. Pairing historic crash data with current maps makes driving risk assessment easier with an application that provides warnings on-the-fly.