The weather affects how long it takes to travel from one place to the next, but I’m not aware of any mapping application that incorporates this fact. From what I can tell from a brief overview, the standard mapping applications seem to rely on relatively static estimations of expected speed limits and traffic for a given road. This seems a bit slow and out-of-date for the modern mobile world.
How about an application that uses geo-tagged weather data to estimate driving conditions for a given route? In addition to estimation, the app could also parse “testimonial” data from the twitterzone, local radio/TV reports, and public announcements to directly qualify the state of the roads.
Some other possible data sources available in the U.S. include the Department of Transportation’s national traffic and road closure site, the 511 road information system, and the sundry regional traffic/weather services. With enough observational data, it would even be possible to develop estimates for actual driving times days in advance.
In addition to aiding individual motorists, I can envision this system being of some use for ground-transportation companies (read: truckers). I bet it could help fine tune expected delivery times and enhance accountability for drivers that come in late and blame things on the weather.
Dang, I may have just thought myself out of a decent excuse for occasionally sleeping in…
