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London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#21

Post by [deleted] »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #18
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

> GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Strongly disagreed. GPS has traffic information, a human driver does not.

[deleted]

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#22

Post by solistice »

balabaster wrote: post #8
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Reading the article, I can't help but think that a GTA/CrazyTaxi street-accurate video game based on this test would be amazing.

You could probably sell it to the Knowledge Boys & Girls cramming for the test - they wouldn't have to log so many hours on the road putting wear & tear on their rented vehicles trying to cram for the test. They can run around for as long as they can stay awake without ever leaving the comfort of their home. Plug it into something like Occulus rift or some VR environment... and if they hit traffic, they can kill that…

The main problem I see with that is detail and the age of your data.

Drawing from experience trying to memorize a journey through the city of Bale, which whilst less large than London is quite winding and certainly suffers from the same compounding of historical and modern buildings. Going through my route, spots where i stopped to take in more details are very much more tangible in my mind. The wide park circled by a walkway where I stopped for a short break is quite vivid in my memory, and I can pull dozens and dozens of points from it. The path along the viaduktstraße leading up to it is far more faint in my memory, considering I only remember the Paulskirche and one of the bridges towards it. Considering only something akin to Google Streetview would be practical, there seems to be just to few points your mind can latch onto to create a detailed image of the location. In addition to that, your other senses do play a significant role in remembering locations.

Also, cab drivers need to know very recent information you're tempted to overlook designing a game like that. How fast does traffic go at this time of day at this location? Are they setting up construction over here? It's often not even realized consciously, but rather factors into decisions on a lower level, turning into the "hunch" you have about a certain route or even more generally a certain course of action.

So unless there is a way to have a perfect representation of the city that is also less than a day or two old, it's not really a replacement for actually going through those streets.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#23

Post by eterm »

crazypyro wrote: post #16
ntoshev wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a trivial problem. Track how anyone with a smartphone and your app on it moves around the city. Aggregate which paths they choose and which turn out to be faster / better. Then propose those paths to other users asking for routing instructions. I work on a software for routing deliveries ( https://www.fleetnavi.com ), and although we don't have this functionality built into the platform yet, it's the first thin…

Tracking, aggregating and analyzing thousands of users with slightly varied destinations, focuses (less traffic, faster, scenic), and signals is not exactly what I'd consider trivial...

Tracking, aggregating and analyzing thousands of packets with varied destinations, priorities and signals isn't trivial either, but it's something that some people and businesses have become very good at.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#24

Post by chuckcode »

As automatics routing software takes into account the extra information of traffic history with real time existing traffic conditions computers will do just as well or better than "The Knowledge Boys". Currently local experience with traffic is very useful, but as that information becomes available electronically and much more comprehensively the playing field will tilt even more to automated analysis. UPS already uses their combined driving history to save millions of man hours and millions of tanks of gas[1]. I have to imagine that Google and others can do even better with all of us implicitly telling routes and existing traffic conditions. Be interesting to know if Google is doing a/b testing with their routes in maps like they do with their website UI.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/ups-uses-big-data-t...

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#25

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

guelo wrote: post #20
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Strongly disagreed. GPS has traffic information, a human driver does not.

A human that drives the same roads everyday most definitely does have traffic information.

I always use GPS even on the roads I use almost daily because the traffic information my GPS provides (Google Maps) works much better than me guessing what the traffic will be. Even if I know that traffic will be slow in the morning on certain roads, I cannot predict accidents and construction work.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#26

Post by dkopi »

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

San Francisco's hills are a very localized issue. Most cities are pretty flat. London included. Of course it's just a matter of time until GPS programs integrate topographical awareness, and give you the ability to avoid steep climbs.

Its also just a matter of time until cars provide visual aids for navigation, and not just the voice on a GPS device.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#27

Post by danielweber »

mtalantikite wrote: post #13

Here in Brooklyn car services seem to have lost the ability to navigate the city in just a few years. You used to be able to call a car service, have a car show up in 5 minutes, and they'd get there with just the cross streets. Now most often the first question is "what's the address so I can put it into my GPS", even with metered cabs. I've been yelled at for asking to take routes that the GPS doesn't suggest, even…

My (limited) experience in Brooklyn is that taxis don't know addresses, they know cross-streets.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#28

Post by pimlottc »

dkopi wrote: post #26
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

San Francisco's hills are a very localized issue. Most cities are pretty flat. London included. Of course it's just a matter of time until GPS programs integrate topographical awareness, and give you the ability to avoid steep climbs. Its also just a matter of time until cars provide visual aids for navigation, and not just the voice on a GPS device.

I think you're being a bit dismissive. Hills are just one example - every city has its local issues, be they hills, rivers, different laws, traffic patterns...

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#29

Post by jedc »

custardcream wrote: post #9
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

Well I drive around London a lot during the day time (inside CC zone) and Google Maps is pretty damn good on Android. I did a few years in taxis but owning a car that is CC exempt is cheaper including parking in NCP holes. Part of the reason its cheaper is after some experience driving around the city, you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss. "the knowledge" is imminently replaceable by te…

It's not completely replaceable by technology.

Once I had gotten a text from my wife as to where to meet her for dinner with friends. She didn't know the restaurant name, and had gotten the street name wrong. I just read the text to my London black cab driver, he asked me: "Did you mean XXX restaurant on [correct street name]?" (Note: there were multiple restaurants on the street). And sure enough, he was 100% correct.

That's the day I learned to really respect drivers with The Knowledge.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#30

Post by divegeek »

[deleted] wrote: post #21
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Strongly disagreed. GPS has traffic information, a human driver does not.

[deleted]

True, and GPS navigation can have real-time traffic information while a cabbie can at best make an educated guess.

What's _really_ valuable, though, isn't real-time traffic information, but future traffic information. What matters isn't the traffic right now, but the traffic as it will be when you arrive at a given portion of the journey. I suspect that at present cabbies have the edge there, but that edge will also be swept away by predictive algorithms incorporating knowledge of typical traffic patterns plus lots of inputs about events that may affect traffic.

The latter point is particularly interesting if a navigation system acquires enough scale that it is directing a substantial fraction of the traffic. In that case, it knows not only what external events may affect traffic, but can further make decisions to control the flow, distributing and smoothing.

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