blown 87

You look it up, many small towns and some big cities on my route from Paragould Arkansas to south of Harelson Georgia.
A guess would be that at least 200 miles of it are on two lane roads.
All but a few miles in Georgia are two lane, mixed roads.

Adrian_

Then I'd say you did very well, but still, you had a good part of the trip on highway/interstate. Plus I'm totally unfamiliar with what kind of traffic one might expect in the US on two lane roads.

Out of curiosity, how's Garmin's estimate travel time within big cities in the US? Here is completelly off, but this might be caused by lack of data from the traffic authorities.


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1979 Euro

blown 87

It is off here also, it assumes that you will travel at least 25 MPH all the time, and that is not going to happen.

heinrich

I have a 265W and I'm totally unimpressed ... I wish I could say the opposite, I REALLY wish I could. This thing has traffic conditions updated on the fly with an FM receiver, which DOES work well. But a) you're correct the arrival time initially estimated, is a best-condition one .... and worse ... b) I've had good success in town, but on a recent trip back from the Oregon coast, it kept insisting I should take little forest roads ..... literally one-lane mud trails over forested mountains. Very irritating. Had to estimate my own route and add cities as waypoints. Also, when one ignores the incessant prompts to turn back, turn around, go bak 70 miles and take that forest mud trail into the Sasquatch mountains .... it doesn't properly realise "OK this dude has ignored me, let's recalculate intelligently where he's headed as he's on a straight 4-lane freeway and likely that's the best route"... it just keeps telling me "turn at the next footpath, drive 15 hours back the way you came, and get the hell back onto the path I say" LOL. Again ... in the tiny city of Seattle (I mean that) the 265W works well. Actually....

I find the Google Maps and Bing Maps on my cell phones works a lot better.

blown 87

Look at your settings, change them to fastest route.
Also look at your system settings, make sure the usage mode is set for automobile.
You can also have it set up for no u-turns.

Something is not set up right for it to take you off road like that.

jcorenman

H, dig into the Garmin's settings and UN-check the box for "Little muddy forest fire service roads" as a preference.

(You didn't by chance let a 12-year old play with your GPS??).

69gaugeman

It may be inaccurate when doing 'through city' drives, but how can you expect it to account for traffic lights and congestion? It should adjust for your average rate of speed on a given road though.

It has just a tiny little processor in it and has a lot of stuff to do.

JPTL

A little off time-to-destination topic, but a GPS must-have IMO:
I live in Mongomery Co., MD which is the capital of The People's Republic of Maryland. Salivating at the massive revenues that red light cameras were generating for our next door neighbor, Washington DC, MoCo installed a ton of red light cameras under the guise of safety. Not a problem for me, since I don't run reds. But the county soon followed with speed cameras in school zones. Still no problem, since I don't speed in school zones. But the 'safety' rationale was simply a trojan horse to get the public accustomed to cameras throughout the county. Now massive revenue potential has expanded the program throughout the county, which was a test bed for the state.
So now, speed cameras are now being installed on primary, and secondary arteries and interstates in Maryland. Other states are watching how this shakes out, trust me. When they catch wind of the revenues, don't be surprised to see these things everywhere.

If you live in, or travel through a camera-laden area, & use a portable GPS, there's a way to battle these revenue generators:
A downloadable file that goes into your GPS. Points of Interest 'POI's are loaded into your device in the form of a CSV file. It's similar to a spreadsheet format and uses coordinates, warning distance, and text data. It plots all fixed and mobile red light (3,500+) and speed cameras (350+) in the country. What makes this invaluable IMO is that they are advance warnings. You get a 'bong bong' audible and a red banner with warning text prior to approaching a fixed or mobile camera location.
$5 gets you one month's access to the most current red light and speed cameras throughout the country. $20 gets you a year. These are updated every week or so. Montgomery Co. is installing speed cameras like gangbusters, and the updates have been keeping up with the locations. So far, my wife (who had never gotten a speeding ticket in her life) has racked up 4 speed camera tickets. Me? Not a single one.
I have no affiliation with these guys, I'm just passing on a great enhancement to portable GPS's.
POI Factory
They also have 1,000+ free POIs like favorite restaurants, Starbucks, Breweries, etc.

Adrian_

As JPTL pointed out, a GPS is very useful for avoiding speedcams, if you can keep the list up to date. But other then that, when going in unknown areas, you MUST check the route it offers with a good map.

Believe me, I had all these settings done and double checked this spring and summer, when I took two trips with my family in Greece. I also had the last Greece map installed. The result?

1. Near Argos the GPS made us enter some alleys between the olive plantations (max 3 meters wide) when it was a nice 4 lane road crossing the city towards the citadel.

2. In the centre of Athens it made us take a tiny road that was bordered with open-air restaurants for about 700 hundred meters. Took me about 20 minutes to make those 700 meters and managed to do it only because the crowd was tourists only, and everyone was having a good time (of course I couldn't back up - the road leading to it was one sense, one lane).

3. In Corfu it insisted to take a mountain road that was perfectly suited for hardcore rally (lots of 180 degrees turns with bid level difference), instead of the flat main road leading to the south of the island. Since we spent there 14 days I had the time to test all possible settings, no matter what I did the GPS simply ignored the main road, even if it was perfectly able to re-route once we passed the crossroad. In fact, the Corfu routing was so bad that I simply ceased to use the GPS and used a map and the road signs. But I left it open just to make fun of it with my wife, and literally we lost the count of the instances when it tried to march us "between the olives"

As I said before, if you don't check the route using a map, you might be in for some really unpleasant surprises if you rely just on the GPS. It will eventually take you from A to B, but sometimes it will choose the most weird route possible.


Ah, I forgot when it tried to make me take a left that simply didn't existed . There was no road or even alley there for at least 200 meters, if I followed blindly his indications I might have crashed the car in someone's dining room


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1979 Euro

blown 87

In two years mine has never tried to take me off road or given me any kind of surprise.
I tend to use MapSource to plan routes and there is a setting under preferences that allows you to select, on a sliding scale if you prefer minor or major roads, mine is set in the middle.

How are you planing your trips?

hacker-pschorr

It all depends on how the maps are recorded, it's not the GPS units fault.

We have a recreational trail that spans three counties in my area. One of those counties this trail shows up on the GPS as an available road. The other two counties it doesn't even exist much less showing up on the route.

Adrian_

For longer trips I usually plan the route using ViaMichelin service ( http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichel...MaHomePage.htm, which performs flawless in Europe) and then by setting intermediate points for the GPS aso.

But all the above mentioned adventures happened on shorter trips, for which I didn't bothered to do this routine.

P.S. I might have been unclear, it never took me offroad, even the olive plantation alleys had some asphalt on them. The only exception was the inexistent left turn, but it might have some "Destruction Derby" hidden option

BTW, when I tried to make it finally point to the main road in Corfu, I even slided the scale all the way to major roads. Still nothing . My guess is that some portions of the maps, especially in remote areas, are really old, dating way before the modernisation of some roads aso.


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1979 Euro

heinrich

I did alter my settings today to shortest route but it really did more of that leading me off highways so I set it back to shortest time

Adrian_

Shortest route will almost always take you off the main roads.


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1979 Euro

heinrich

btw Blown yes all my settings were fine. thanks for your advice :-)