Patent ID: 7480560

Claim:
A method of compiling vehicular traffic flow information, the method comprising: acquiring vehicular traffic data in the form of position information from a plurality of wireless telephones capable of receiving and disseminating position information and having Global Positioning System (GPS) capability, each of said plurality of wireless telephones being carried by a respective vehicle, the GPS capabilities of said wireless telephones being used to determine the position of the related wireless telephone and, thus, the position of the vehicle carrying the wireless telephone, wherein acquiring vehicular traffic data from the plurality of wireless telephones includes allowing users of the plurality of wireless telephones to choose to provide vehicular traffic data; utilizing the acquired vehicular traffic data from the plurality of wireless telephones to determine velocity of movement data for the vehicles carrying the wireless telephones and utilizing the velocity of movement data to compile traffic flow information for the geographical area within which the vehicles carrying the plurality of wireless telephones are located; and disseminating the traffic flow information only to the users of the plurality of wireless telephones that provide the vehicular traffic data.