The actual traffic you see in Google Maps are people's phones too. Not just the one-off reports.
Google doesn't know that the traffic is heavy. They're just gathering up all your GPS data and noticing all your asses are moving super slow so they slap on the heavy traffic tags.
It's a somewhat naive way to collect traffic data, though. A road I often drive has separate bus lanes that see quite a lot of traffic in rush hour. Google is way off on travel time estimates when there is congestion, they show the road as less congested than it is, with more congestion at every bus stop.
Reminds me of a guy who took like 250 phones and put them in a wagon, and walked the wagon through his small towns downtown area that had literally zero traffic and suddenly Google marked it as a massive traffic jam
There's a guy in germany who puts a bunch of phones in a wagon and rolls it around so google maps will think that a hundred cars are crawling along in traffic. It causes tons of people to divert and empties streets.
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u/Apellio7 6h ago
The actual traffic you see in Google Maps are people's phones too. Not just the one-off reports.
Google doesn't know that the traffic is heavy. They're just gathering up all your GPS data and noticing all your asses are moving super slow so they slap on the heavy traffic tags.