A passive traffic alerting method includes: identifying traffic events from analyzing traffic information; selecting an identified traffic event based on a location of a mobile communicator; and alerting the mobile communicator with a passive message regarding the selected traffic event without prompting the mobile communicator to launch an application on a mobile communication device. In some cases a user-zone and an event zone is selected and the user gets alerted when his user-zone overlaps with the event-zone. The alert can contain hierarchical messages. The method may include: determining an alert zone by rating a traffic incident and overlaying maps of the incident, the cell-phone towers, and the corresponding road network; acquiring user identification of cell phone users from data from cell-phone towers in the alert-zone; identifying subscribers from acquired cell-phone tower data; matching subscribers with alerts in appropriate formats; and sending the appropriate alert messages to cell phones of identified subscribers.