- Google Maps is scanning dash cam footage to help it update things like changing speed limits.
- Footage is licensed from companies either gathering videos themselves, or sourced from manufacturers whose users have consented to sharing.
- Right now the program only appears to be active in the UK.
Google Maps has complied a positively bonkers amount of data. That includes not just mountains of imagery, from Street View to satellites, but databases storing information about all these streets themselves: tolls, one-way status, and more. And while all of that info adds up to making Google Maps as useful as it is, that’s also an overwhelming amount of info to have to keep up to date. Google is now trying out a new approach towards keeping some of that info current, although one that’s not going to be without a few privacy concerns.
Google may be driving around its own cars to gather Street View imagery, but it also crowdsources some of the data that powers Maps — this is exactly how it’s able to display congestion information, by using the location of users who have opted in to sharing it. Now the company is looking to a new source of data gathered from drivers: videos from dash cameras (via 9to5Google).