GPS Network Aims to Beat Traffic Jams

You may soon be able to evade a traffic jam with a little help from your fellow driver, the Washington Post reports. California start-up Dash Navigation is launching a GPS device that collects speed and location data from vehicles, then uses the information to figure out which roads are congested and warn drivers away.

"Dash is right on the front end of the next wave of devices and applications that harvest ambient data and then build real-time services from it," said one expert. The $599 unit will rely heavily at first on average traffic times but will become more accurate as users sign up. The information gleaned from vehicles on the road comes from GPS coordinates and is anonymous, the Post notes. (More GPS stories.)