Say goodbye to gridlock

A three-way partnership between Cellfind, TrafficNet and Tracker means South African motorists can now receive live traffic updates—and navigate away from gridlock.

The service, called miTRAFFIC, will provide motorists with traffic reports as well as a “heat” map of congestion for areas within a 50km radius of the subscribed location.

The initiative uses Tracker’s SkyTrax technology to measure traffic flow based on the speed and position of about 100 000 vehicles fitted with Tracker devices.

The company has also stripped out the “nuisance variable” from trucks, according to spokesperson Gareth Crocker, because these vehicles move a lot slower than your average SUV in a hurry.

While 100 000 vehicles may not sound like a lot, Crocker says that at the very least there’ll be three or four vehicles on the road at any time, say, on the notorious highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg. This provides enough information to show that vehicles are crawling along at 30km/h after which you’ll head off the highway in search of a back road.

In addition, the service makes use of TrafficNet—a national traffic incident service—which will provide the reasons for the congestion.

Crocker says they’re also looking at partnering with other automotive navigation providers such as TomTom or Garmin.

The service costs R12 a week and subscribers will receive 10 traffic updates for their R12. To subscribe customers can either SMS the word REGISTER to 31887 or register online at www.mitraffic.co.za.

And now that you know where to go, why not install Trapster, that will warn you of traffic officers behind bushes.