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Makers of stand-alone automobile navigation devices are losing sales as more mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets include GPS apps. Dutch manufacturer Tom Tom thought it could compensate for the sales decline by tapping into an emerging market -- local and regional governments in the Netherlands that use the data from drivers' GPS devices to catch speeders.
Tom Tom's sleazy way to make up GPS revenue shortfall | ITworld
Seeded on Tue May 3, 2011 4:41 PM EDT
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Tom Tom CEO Harold Goddijn issued an apology, claiming that the GPS maker thought the driver data would be used by law-enforcement authorities to improve road safety and ease traffic jams.
"We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it," he wrote in an email Wednesday.
- 1 vote
#1 - Tue May 3, 2011 4:43 PM EDTSure you didn't see this one coming. If my GPS tattled on me it would be gone. The same goes for my toll road electronic pass.
- 1 vote
I would imagine the GPS "tattled" to the manufacturer to get traffic updates.
Your toll road pass tattles on you all the time. That's what it's supposed to do. They just aren't using it to give traffic tickets (yet). If they have two readers a mile apart, and you're recorded going past the second reader 45 seconds after the first, your average speed is 80MPH--will that be cash or check?
As I understand the article, the police didn't use the GPS data directly to issue ticket to the GPS owners, they used the aggregate data to figure the best places to locate speed traps.
- 1 vote
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