Worst LBS App Ever?
Here’s my entry in the Bad LBS category: Nissan is putting together a pedestrian safety system called “Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)” that will “warn drivers of nearby pedestrians using GPS receivers in the car and participating cellphones.” The location of the car and the pedestrians are transmitted to the ITS system, which makes a variety of calculations about collision risk, then sends alerts to the car if a collision is predicted. Hmmm. So here’s my one-minute brain dump of problems: false alarms very annoying; what about pedestrians not on the system; very complicated ecosystem required; huge privacy implications; overly complex centralized system required; constant location updates required on a micro-second refresh rate; causes constant wireless data traffic; what about cellphones of pedestrians while they are in a car; the 3 – 15 meter accuracy rate of GPS (especially in cities) becomes very significant; the plan is to address ‘distracted cellphone users’, what, by distracting drivers, too; cars need to be upgraded for this. Enough. My gosh! Just because you come up with an idea doesn’t mean you should build it. Who signed off to fund this turkey?
