5 ms·

Why couldn't gps resolve the street name errors automatically?

by TwoBit 6y ago

ldoughty 6y ago
GPS in cities can be hit and miss. Also means more expensive/new devices. Lat/long would give you a good idea of the 3-9 most likely roads involved, but it won't necessarily prove which road exactly... so humans would still need to review the entered road to lat/long and find the right road to plug in. Alternatively, and perhaps this is what you were thinking... GPS-assisted drop downs (or scroll-able list of selections) might provide an easier user interface... Cop hits the "street" button, and the GPS provides a selection of the most likely suspects. It won't be perfect, since a manual entry field should still be provided, but it probably would stop fat-fingering. But we're solving a problem to make data analytics and the lives of cops easier... The city wont make money, it'll probably cost them hundreds of thousands (or millions). So the incentive is very small. You or I, as lovers of accurate data, might like this. In court, however, a judge or lawyer will see "Lke Shore", see the cop meant "Lake Shore", and the conflict is resolved in milliseconds.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  You are right, GPS has a margin of error that gets exaggerated in concrete canyons. It may take longer than you want to wait to resolve, etc. An error introduced by GPS can get the ticket thrown out if someone contests it, but misspelling a street name is not. Why bother? Chicago addressing is on the grid system. Anyone familiar with it can identify the location of something just with the street name and block number. No need to reference a map or GPS or anything. 1166 N State St is about half a block south of Division, on the west side of the street. Any city worker will instantly make that connection. You have a really high bar to climb over to make improvements worth implementing.
theparkinguys 6y ago
I work for a software company that makes an app for local government to issue parking tickets (although we don't operate in the US - Europe, Asia, and Africa only). We tried doing GPS selection/filtering of streets, but we found that it didn't solve the real issue - the people issuing the tickets don't always know where they are. The app can tell them they are near Evergreen Road, Evergreen Terrace, Evergreen Street, Evergreen Street Car Park - it's up to them to pick the right one still. As others have pointed out, GPS can be pretty bad in cities with tall buildings.
phkx 6y ago
It's the problem of 'map matching', see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_matching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_matching I have no practical experience in it, just wanted to leave the reference for others.

Why couldn't gps resolve the street name errors automatically?

by TwoBit 6y ago

Why couldn't gps resolve the street name errors automatically?

GPS in cities can be hit and miss. Also means more expensive/new devices. Lat/long would give you a good idea of the 3-9 most likely roads involved, but it won't necessarily prove which road exactly... so humans would still need to review the entered road to lat/long and find the right road to plug in. Alternatively, and perhaps this is what you were thinking... GPS-assisted drop downs (or scroll-able list of selections) might provide an easier user interface... Cop hits the "street" button, and the GPS provides a selection of the most likely suspects. It won't be perfect, since a manual entry field should still be provided, but it probably would stop fat-fingering. But we're solving a problem to make data analytics and the lives of cops easier... The city wont make money, it'll probably cost them hundreds of thousands (or millions). So the incentive is very small. You or I, as lovers of accurate data, might like this. In court, however, a judge or lawyer will see "Lke Shore", see the cop meant "Lake Shore", and the conflict is resolved in milliseconds.

OldHand2018 6y ago
You are right, GPS has a margin of error that gets exaggerated in concrete canyons. It may take longer than you want to wait to resolve, etc. An error introduced by GPS can get the ticket thrown out if someone contests it, but misspelling a street name is not. Why bother? Chicago addressing is on the grid system. Anyone familiar with it can identify the location of something just with the street name and block number. No need to reference a map or GPS or anything. 1166 N State St is about half a block south of Division, on the west side of the street. Any city worker will instantly make that connection. You have a really high bar to climb over to make improvements worth implementing.

theparkinguys 6y ago

I work for a software company that makes an app for local government to issue parking tickets (although we don't operate in the US - Europe, Asia, and Africa only). We tried doing GPS selection/filtering of streets, but we found that it didn't solve the real issue - the people issuing the tickets don't always know where they are. The app can tell them they are near Evergreen Road, Evergreen Terrace, Evergreen Street, Evergreen Street Car Park - it's up to them to pick the right one still. As others have pointed out, GPS can be pretty bad in cities with tall buildings.

phkx 6y ago

It's the problem of 'map matching', see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_matching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_matching I have no practical experience in it, just wanted to leave the reference for others.