How the DGT Big Brother works: saving lives instead of issuing fines

The trivial gesture of activating the windscreen wipers, something drivers’ fingers automatically do when it starts drizzling, turns into a piece of data that reaches the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT). Hundreds of fingers repeat this movement at almost the same time: it has started to rain somewhere and the traffic has become more hazardous.

With each movement, the DGT 3.0 platform therefore feeds on what is happening on the roads and it communicates this from one point to another: to the information panels on main roads, to drivers’ mobile phones and navigation systems, etc.

When a V-16 light is turned on, Traffic also receives an alert, and the same happens with a connected cone in roadworks or in a sporting event. This is also read out loud in real time by the same channels.

Anonymous information for the DGT

All data reach DGT 3.0 and they are sent out from there, but these are anonymous: Traffic insists that no names are included with the data.This has been reiterated by the Deputy Director-General of Mobility and Technology Management of the DGT Jorge Ordás, in a technical conference on a platform which is becoming more and more powerful and which it supports, in addition to other companies, Vodafone and Pons Mobility

“The information that reaches us is absolutely anonymous.We work with these data, but we don’t know who gives them or who obtains them. However, we make sure that it is high-quality,” sums up Ordás.