I update the Nuvi every now and then but I don't know why I bother. It has a vivid imagination. There were the motels where it was pretty apparent there hadn't been a structure in the vacant field anytime in this century, and the suggestion I take a right on a gas pipeline cut in North Dakota. The grocery stores and motels that are out of business I can sort of understand.
I use my Garmin all the time. The centrally mounted speedometer is a pain in the butt and the studded tires I run in the winter throw it off by about 10%. The Garmin does speed nicely although it does have little psychotic episodes every now and then.
There's only one street in Podunk; 1234 is right next to Lucky Lil's casino.
I keep a Rand McNally atlas in the car for large scale planning. After a few hundred thousand miles in a big truck I'm allergic to interstates and places like Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, St Louis, and so forth.
Interstates are for getting someplace without the inconvenience of actually seeing anything along the way. I read a while back that Rt 66 is making a bit of a comeback with tourists.
If time is limited you may not have a choice, but instead of I81, the Skyline Drive is much nicer.
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Multiple times...made no difference.
Get off the major highways to cut across jog 10 mi N and then back S to the same latitude and it'll tell you missed a turn back there. Thinks county roads beneath dignity to travel on and get dusty I suppose... :)
Any number of stories in mountainous areas folks blindly following directions during winter and end up stranded at high elevations on what are closed roads. Some die. Of course, they haven't a lick of sense to not realize something isn't right long before it gets that bad but many now seem unable to function w/o such crutches and common sense and thinking is replaced by rote action.
Sent daughter over 100 mi out way on last trip out here from E TN by keeping her on I40 all the way to Amarillo before heading straight north instead of cutting off the corner by the diagonal at OKC. Just no common sense in their directions often..."biggest road wins".
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That is why I use a paper map and often drive the bulk of the route by road sign.
Just for fun, set it for "no tolls" around the NJ and NY area. If you follow their route you can save a $5 toll by driving an extra 200 miles.
Another time I checked it out when using an alternate route to work. The simple way is follow the road to a main road, turn left and go another few miles. Just for fun I turned on the navigation. Well before the regular turn it had me go left, then right, then left, the right, then left, then right then finally a left onto the road I normally would use. The computer probably calculated it to be 100 yards shorter by zig zagging the side streets.
I've given up on Garmins for automotive use. Thr TomTom has been trouble free and if kept updated is pretty accurate on everything except (sometimes) restaurants - which have a pretty short half-life around here.
Depends on settings. My TomTom can select fastest or shortest distance, and I can select if I want gravel, interstates, toll roads, etc or not
There are some nice places on the historic 66, but a lot of it became I-40. It's often the business route through the towns 40 didn't kill off completely.
Nothing that quaint but I tend to seek out motels that aren't part of the Wyndham family. They're getting hard to find.
I came through Vegas one year and decided to humor the Nuvi. It seems inefficient if you're coming up 93 since you go west a few miles before intersecting 15 and heading back northeast. The Nuvi gave me the guided tour of the surface streets in NLV. I wasn't in a hurry but it wasn't any sort of a time saver.
? S to the same latitude and it'll tell you missed a turn back there.
Doesn’t do that here.
Works fine here and I do lots of that.
Hardly anyone does here in bushfires, what you lot call wildfires. Not something any nav system can do anything much about except by monitoring the traffic on cellphone bases and google maps does the much better than anything else.
It isnt a crutch any more than a paper map is and works much better than any paper map can do by monitoring cellphone base traffic.
Corse that doesn’t work when the power company turns off the power.
You are free to select the route when initially routing.
I wouldn't leave home without my Garmin. Since the cumulative cost of a speeding ticket is around $500, the speeding alert feature has paid for itself twice now.
Hell, I have racked up 85,000 kilometres in less than 4 years.
Bob snipped-for-privacy@bob.bob wrote
That’s one thing that google maps doesn’t currently do for some reason.
Whereis does, but only when navigating, it wont do it all the time.
Its also something I cant currently buy in an advanced cruise control, being able to tell it to drive at x above the speed limit and have it do that in towns on a long trip on highways. But it will be mandated in the EU soon, forget the date, so should show up soon.
Only because you are stupid enough to drive when you should fly. I havent done that in 13 years and I don’t stay in my home town all the time.
It depends... There are two principal competitors, HERE (formerly NavTeq) and Tele Atlas. TomTom owns Tele Atlas and HERE wound up being owned by Audi, BMW, and Mercedes after passing through Nokia. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
The speed limits can take a while to catch up, depending on the location. The local city dropped the limit on several streets to 35 and those haven't been updated well. When the interstate went to 80 from 75 that rippled through better.
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That's not terribly much over averages of 12K mi/yr...combined vehicles do that routinely for us.
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Well, if one has to drive 200-250 mi to get to airport w/ any connections, it doesn't make that all that convenient. Plus, one then doesn't have transportation at the other end without renting.
Flying is a PITA these days. I have a trip coming up. North 1000 miles, spend a couple of days and make a stop about half way on the way back. Just so much easier to drive.
I would have taken it if offered standard. The way they package stuff today often makes it necessary to buy a package with something you do not want e.g. a sun roof.
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