Map material with truck info upcoming

The project is called NAVTEQ transport. Bit by bit, map info especially for trucks is being gathered and added to the existing maps. For the last few months, (test) data for France has been available, and this week there have been demonstrations of this specific map material for the German road grid. By Q1 of next year, the final material will be available for use in trucks.

As we all know, truck-drivers cannot use all the roads that are available for car-drivers because of the sheer size of their vehicle. It's also possible that truckers would prefer other, most likely safer routes by avoiding steep roads or windy areas. The current PND's are not equipped to aid truckers with this. NAVTEQ is the first to acknowledge this problem, and has decided to do something about it: currently they are busy at adding extra information to their maps.

Limitations

After part of France' legal and physical truck-limitations were charted a while ago, it's now Germany's turn. At this moment, additional info for more than 133.000 km of roads has already been entered. Think height, weight, width or length limitations here, or roads that are forbidden for trucks entirely. Also steep climbs, sharp turns and windy areas have been input. Using this info, the trucker can decide to avoid certain areas. Also, special POI categories for truckers have been made available, like truck-stops, road restaurants and petrol stations with special diesel-pumps.

Efficiency

This development extends and eases truck navigation a lot. It also adds to the efficiency of freight transport. At this particular time, it's not known when this special map data will be available for the UK. It's also not known which PND manufacturer will offer this map material. But we do know that NAVTEQ is currently working together with Siemens VDO to give demonstrations of this new product.