Help in avoiding costly traffic jams has finally arrived because satellite-navigation devices are becoming more widely utilized and networking effects are making them more powerful. Vehicles themselves are beginning to relay real-time traffic data, and the more vehicles that do so, the more accurate traffic information will become. The largest usage of such a system will occur in the summer of 2008 between New Jersey and North Carolina on the congested 2,500-mile Interstate Highway 95 and its adjacent roads. The project will gather information on vehicle flow using installed road sensors, cameras, and first-hand reports like those from police patrols. This information will be supplemented by real-time data relayed from the satellite-navigation systems in thousands of vehicles that travel these roads daily. The positions of these vehicles will be updated every few minutes, so any hold-ups will quickly become evident. The information will be collected and processed by INRIX, and the data will be used by the highway authorities, emergency services, travel-information providers, and navigation device suppliers and services such as TomTom, Garmin, and Clear Channel. Many commercial fleets already have the necessary equipment, and INRIX thinks the service could easily spread across much of Americas East Coast. Mobile phones in vehicles can also give real-time traffic data. Networking is also helping with the fact that roads themselves change quicker than mapmakers can change maps. As satellite-navigation systems evolve from being devices that just point drivers in the right direction, they will find a much greater use as driver-information systems thanks to the help of new services utilizing powerful databases. One new sophisticated computer-modeling system has historic and live traffic data and it considers weather, roadworks, and the different vehicles using the information. After all, the shortest route is not always the fastest.