HERE Technologies has launched the latest generation of its Real-Time Traffic service. 

This service integrates live vehicle sensor data derived from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles with traffic probe information, thereby providing accurate information on traffic conditions.

Available in more than 60 countries, HERE Real-Time Traffic service offers improvements in traffic flow data, particularly on arterial roads.

In over 30 of these countries, the service also offers incident information along with features such as traffic safety warning. Supported by the new hard-braking sensor data, this new service can now offer relevant and timely notifications to the vehicle.

HERE Technologies senior vice-president automotive Ralf Herrtwich said: "This is the world’s first traffic service to aggregate live rich vehicle sensor data from competing car brands and it represents a major step by HERE to make driving safer and more efficient for people everywhere.

“While it helps drivers making informed decisions behind the wheel today, it also moves us closer to realising our vision of a live representation of the road environment needed for both advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving applications.”

"It moves us closer to realising our vision of a live representation of the road environment needed for both advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving applications."

SBD Labs director Andrew Hart said: "High-quality traffic information is the cornerstone of a good navigation experience. Traffic information providers often define their capabilities by the number of probes they collect data from, but data richness will increasingly become the defining factor between a good service and an excellent one.

"The dozens of sensors equipped on modern cars make them the richest possible source of real-time traffic data. HERE has developed a win-win approach to accessing and analysing rich vehicle data.“

HERE collects billions of information from GPS data points every day and leverages more than 100 different probe and incident sources to offer a strong basis for the Real-Time Traffic service.

HERE, which is now integrating millions of data from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars, expects the fleet size to grow further by next year and beyond.

HERE is also meanwhile expanding the number of commercial vehicles it collects the conventional probe data from.

The enhanced  Real-Time Traffic is the first of the four vehicle-sourced data services that the firm announced last autumn to be commercially available.