Google live traffic information for South Africa

Google has expanded its live traffic coverage to South Africa, with the service now available for the Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria metropolitan areas. The traffic overlay on Google Maps shows current traffic conditions with a color-coded system that rates roads on a scale from fast to slow, and also provides estimated travel times based on current traffic conditions. The service uses ‘crowd-sourced’ data, which analyses information from GPS-enabled phones that have the Google Maps application installed. The anonymous data collected by Google includes the current speed at which the device is moving. Motorists can now view the current traffic flow in the covered areas by clicking on the ‘Traffic’ widget in Google Maps online, or by selecting the ‘View Traffic’ option in the cell phone application.

South Africa is one of the seven new regions to receive the service, along with Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Mexico, Peru and Romania. The company has also improved and expanded its 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. Google Maps software engineer, Matthias Ernst, commented, “If the roads you are travelling do not yet show traffic information; don't despair. You can help your fellow drivers and improve traffic data by using Google Navigation or Google Maps for Mobile while travelling. We hope the traffic feature in Google Maps will help more users around the globe to save time and patience by planning their trips accordingly.”

25 June 2012