The use of probe vehicles on motorways, some empirical observations.

The benefits that many modern information-based telematics systems may bring to vehicle drivers are primarily governed by the quality, relevance and timeliness of information available. One new option for the collection of such data is the use of Probe vehicles which are driven within the traffic stream and provide on-line information to service providers. Although research has studied such systems theoretically, few empirical observations have been made of the variables that may affect information accuracy. This paper reports on the initial implementation of a set of experiments, which attempted to assess the effects of differing transmission intervals, sampling frequency and inter driver variability on data quality, for a beacon based probe vehicle system. For the covering abstract see ITRD E209471.