[eckmLJE]

Around the time this fake traffic jam project was first performed, a friend of mine was working on a condo development that was just about ready to list for sale. They planned an open house. The property itself was very nice and successfully delivered. However, there was a problem.

The property was very convenient to a local highway without being so close that it experienced noise/traffic/primary exposure to exhaust, etc. Google Maps would reliably take people on this highway and to the same exit. From that exit, locals would go one way that was a nice, quiet drive through some residential parts of town. But Maps would take you a different way, a detour down a side street with a public housing project that often presented an open air drug market, and was the site of not infrequent shooting deaths.

Presumably Maps sent you that way because the other direct way was the way most people took, and so this detour had less traffic and was marginally faster. This street was some distance from the condo project, but it would still give people a certain impression of the neighborhood that the developer felt was unfair.

I sent them the linked writeup hoping they would try it, but they never did as far as I know. Also, I'm not sure how well-received someone walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon would be.

[GuB-42]

> Also, I'm not sure how well-received someone walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon would be.

Considering your story, the phones will certainly be well received ;)

[mcast]

>Also, I'm not sure how well-received someone walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon would be.

Is there any way you could just have a single laptop running hundreds of Android simulators? You could just fake the location as well with some jitter.

[kbenson]

> walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon

They could always be thrown in the back of a car, and you can drive slowly down the street, possibly jumping from parked spots on the side if there's light traffic you would be interrupting if you stayed in the street and went too slow.

I wonder if there's people that you can hire that are already set up to do this in large metro areas. It's crazy what you find people doing for side hustles when you look sometimes.