Green/red lines in navigation

[rscott0]

At some point since v8, I've noticed that the navigation screen sometimes has green (and occasionally red) lines on roads. Is there any documentation for this? I searched the forums, but didn't find anything.

I haven't spent much time trying to figure it out, but it seems that the red designates traffic (I don't encounter a lot of traffic, but the few places I saw red were on the side of traffic lights where traffic stops). Green would presumably mean that traffic isn't detected.

The green lines show on roads that I haven't traveled on, so presumably this is from data gathered from cars. There are lots of side roads that it doesn't include, and I have noticed breaks in the lines.

I'm suspecting that the green lines only appear in places Teslas have driven (not including other cars, which would rule out data from other companies), where Tesla knows AP can be enabled.

Could this perhaps be related to v8 using radar, and fleet learning (e.g. Tesla's comment about v8 that "If several cars drive safely past a given radar object, whether Autopilot is turned on or off, then that object is added to the geocoded whitelist.”)? Was this there before, and I just didn't notice?

 

[Xenius]

That is traffic. If you tap the map the icon on the right that looks like three cars stacked on top of each other is the traffic overlay. If it's a dark grey you'll see the traffic info. Pretty sure it's googles traffic info.

 

[Max*]

That's been there since before v8. It seems to be based on the data that Google maps gathers, not related to Tesla's driving on the roads.

 

[rscott0]

I'm surprised I didn't notice it before.

The reason I suspected non-Google data is that it seems incomplete (e.g. missing a chunk of road in one place going one direction, but not the other, and the lines stopping abruptly where you would not expect them to).

 

[bob_p]

The traffic lines are generated along roads that are getting enough travel to provide a reasonable estimate of average traffic speed.

Since there's little traffic over night, in the early morning, you'll likely see few area roads with the traffic lines. And as more people start driving, not only will there be traffic lines on the highways, but the major surface and neighborhood streets will also "light up" with traffic data.

I've found the new green/red lines can be difficult to read at times, especially when displaying a satellite map.

 

[wamochi]

After v8, some of the traffic lines are pink/peach. Is that the super heavy congested traffic or is that something between red and yellow?

Before v8 the really bad stuff was like a dark dark red, almost brown.

I don't drive much in traffic, but last night we were driving in rain and trying to choose between 5 and 805 and saw all the pink lines ...

 

[grichard]

Peach-pink seems to be worse than bright red, in my experience and when comparing with google maps on my phone.

Kind of an unintuitive color choice, IMO.

 

[kevinf311]

Peach-pink seems to be worse than bright red, in my experience and when comparing with google maps on my phone.

Kind of an unintuitive color choice, IMO.

Agreed. I have lots of terrible traffic around me and when the color changed from the standard Google Maps dark red (which I refer to as "Angry Red") to this Peach-Pink I wasn't entirely sure if it was the replacement for angry red or if Red red was now the highest and this was another intermediary.

Luckily, for certain definitions of lucky, I found this out when I chose a path with Peach-pink and was sitting still for more time than I would have liked...

I suppose this was to address some of the concerns about traffic and route overlays obstructing the view of map details?

 

[wamochi]

thanks for the feedback. that's what i thought too. usually 805-S is horrendous vs. 5-S at that time of day, but it was raining and we had about 10 sec to decide before the split and i said they must have changed the bumper to bumper color to PINK. my husband thought that was ridiculous, but turns out i was right (as usual)

 

[normd]

I live in the country. I see red lines and there are no cars on the road.

 

[sdmack]

I live in the country. I see red lines and there are no cars on the road.

I see the same, also in low or no traffic areas. Also on quiet side streets intersecting main arteries. Extremely unlikely that there are traffic sensors on these segments. I’m wondering whether this data is crowd sourced from apps like Waze or even the Tesla GPS.

It did show red on one local parkway where one lane was closed and traffic was temporarily restricted to 20 mph below the usual limit, so the lines have some basis in fact, at least sometimes.

 

[f205v]

red lines are gathered from Google Maps data.
They are not only based on congestion, but also on slowdowns due to other reasons. Better to say they compare the average speed of the mobile phones on a given stretch of road to the mapped speed limit. If the average speed is way below the limit they mark it red, regardless of the real traffic congestion.
You can clearly see it on highways with low traffic where there are toll-booth. Official mapped speed limit is probably 65 or 70, but at the toll-booth everyone slows down to zero, stands still for a few seconds, and after re-accelerates to normal speed. This is considered by Google as a significant speed difference from officially mapped one, and therefore the stretch of road leading to the toll-booth is always marked red.

Same in some remote country roads, maybe the official mapped speed limit is 65, but people really go through it at 30 or 35. This is enough of a difference to mark them red.

 

[Dennis GO]

This happened on my screen right after a screen reboot as it was black one morning when I was leaving home.

 

[Wol747]

I have been told that the data is collected by mobile networks and shows the concentration of phones with a speed below a certain level on or near mapped roads.
Makes sense - there's no other data collection that I know of that can get to vehicles.

 

[Brass Guy]

Pink is high traffic on the night map, still dark red/brown in the day. After several years, still hate the grey/grey/grey maps.
I realize the original post is a long time ago, but does anybody still get green lines anymore? The missing green traffic has scre... caused significant delays several times since I cannot tell when a road is clear or closed without the green lines.