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Just in case you wonder, these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. They are th

Just in case you wonder, these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ https://be-mobile.com/ . They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.

mosselman 1y ago
That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy. When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license. Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone... In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.
de_huit 1y ago
Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...
shkkmo 1y ago
> these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps. > Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights. > And due to the inherent red-queen arms race What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation. Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  "This can also be done by privacy friendly apps." But it is not. "The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights." While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Pay us with your data, and we will provide you tweaking traffic lights. What exactly are you running defense for? "Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation" Have you driven in Belgium? It is what it is, not what it "should" be.
  - shkkmo 1y ago
    > While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Again, the whole thrust of this article is that people aren't incentivized yet to use or switch navigation apps. > But it is not. Yet. If that is something you want, go fund some opensource mapping apps to add the feature. Without detailed technical information, this seems like a reasonable approach to solve a hard problem that isn't well solved now. Opt-in traffic data collection via an open standard api seems like be best case scenario here. I'd be interested in specific criticism about how mapping apps are given access to the API, what exact data has to be shared to enable or other specific aspects of this program. Your knee-jerk reactionary talking points aren't interesting though.
Ajedi32 1y ago
Very glad to hear that. If the apps are made by commercial entities then presumably I get a choice of which one to use, which means in the absence of any artificial barriers I can choose one that respects my privacy (possibly something open-source). If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.
- nmca 1y ago
  You can dream of better yet! If the spec was required to be open source for the government project, then you could have commercial choices and some less feature rich open source version.

mosselman 1y ago

That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy. When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license. Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone... In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.

de_huit 1y ago

Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...

shkkmo 1y ago

> these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens. While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps. > Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights. > And due to the inherent red-queen arms race What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation. Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.

PeterStuer 1y ago
"This can also be done by privacy friendly apps." But it is not. "The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights." While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Pay us with your data, and we will provide you tweaking traffic lights. What exactly are you running defense for? "Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation" Have you driven in Belgium? It is what it is, not what it "should" be.
- shkkmo 1y ago
  > While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Again, the whole thrust of this article is that people aren't incentivized yet to use or switch navigation apps. > But it is not. Yet. If that is something you want, go fund some opensource mapping apps to add the feature. Without detailed technical information, this seems like a reasonable approach to solve a hard problem that isn't well solved now. Opt-in traffic data collection via an open standard api seems like be best case scenario here. I'd be interested in specific criticism about how mapping apps are given access to the API, what exact data has to be shared to enable or other specific aspects of this program. Your knee-jerk reactionary talking points aren't interesting though.

Ajedi32 1y ago

Very glad to hear that. If the apps are made by commercial entities then presumably I get a choice of which one to use, which means in the absence of any artificial barriers I can choose one that respects my privacy (possibly something open-source). If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.

nmca 1y ago
You can dream of better yet! If the spec was required to be open source for the government project, then you could have commercial choices and some less feature rich open source version.