US shows route ahead
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• British truck drivers are stuck in the stone age while their US rivals use advanced technology to monitor road conditions hundreds of miles ahead, say interne specialists.
Continuously updated maps on the Internet show US truckers road-congestion hot-spots while pictures from roadside cameras reveal conditions on important junctions.
Much of this information is accessible in Britain but no-one has yet made it available.
Speaker after speaker at the Intelligent Transport Systems conference in London last week told delegates that other countries are beating the UK at providing hauliers with road information. They backed their case with demonstrations of internet routeing information around major US cities.
Embryonic systems are being tested in Southampton and Nottingham but the private sector has been slow to come up with answers, says IT Minister Ian Taylor.
But there are signs that the UK is catching up. The Highways Agency will issue a consultation document this summer in which it will ask hauliers how they can best use its huge archives of road traffic data and its highways monitoring network.
One of the problems is delivering the information to the cab. although mobile phones that can display web pages are on sale and hold the promise of easy in-cab communications.