Annoying garmin routing

Cyrus

very frustrated over the weekend, seems to happen every time i use it in the country side.

my garmin keeps routing me onto tiny country roads hardly wide enough for one car, when there is a perfectly good national road or regional road that will get me the same way quicker (given that i can travel faster on it)

routing is set to fastest etc.

anyone else notice this and got any way around it?

Alun

The problem is that the roads are rated with a speed rating, and that rating appears to be derived purely from the road type, not by anyone actually driving along it and seeing how fast you can realistically drive on it. That means that any and every country R road or less, including boreens with grass growing up the middle of them has a default speed of 80 km/h assigned to it, whether that's feasible or not. It's not just a problem here in Ireland but pretty much everywhere.

Dagon

Indeed.. myself and the girlfriend had a lot of fun in Tenerife last week when the Garmin kept trying to send us through fields of crops and up steep, mountain dirt tracks instead of sending us on the decent roads! We ended up spending a day up mount Teide, when it could have sent us along a dual carriageway (which was an extra 30k or so!)... although in the end I'm glad it did, cos the sight seeing was fantastic.

Must experiment with the settings more...

robinph

GPS units must always be used with a high doseage of sceptisim. A breif look at a paper map or Google maps before heading into the unknown would also do no harm, all you'd need is to remember a couple of major town names along the route and one or two of the major road numbers, if the GPS then starts sending you in the opposite direction to what the road signs are saying then ignore it, don't just blindly follow what they tell you to do.

They are great devices, but you need to know how to navigate for yourself as well to make use of them properly.

Alun

I agree. I generally only really use mine for navigating around urban areas that I don't know (including most of Dublin!). For longer journeys, looking at a map (paper or online) first for 99% of the journey, combined with asking around for local knowledge of the route is far better. I usually turn the voice prompts off until I get close to my destination and ignore it otherwise.

cullenswood

Alun wrote: »

The problem is that the roads are rated with a speed rating, and that rating appears to be derived purely from the road type, not by anyone actually driving along it and seeing how fast you can realistically drive on it.

Is there anyway you can amend the speed limit settings on a Garmin sat nav

Alun

cullenswood wrote: »

Is there anyway you can amend the speed limit settings on a Garmin sat nav

Unfortunately not. You can't even see what they are, to see if they make sense or not.

pigeonbutler

A great example of this is City Centre - Clonsilla/Castleknock. On my 250w at least

It will never ever suggest going through the Phoenix Park, and even when you go into the park it'll try make you turn out of it until you're at least halfway through.

When coming from Clonsillla to town it'll send me down a horrendously narrow, steep, bendy, dangerous road down (Rugged Lane is the name of it!!!) towards the Strawberry Beds rather than the more direct route to Chapelizod or better yet, straight through the park.

robinph

The park is potentially tagged in their maps as being a private road or something though so the routing would try and avoid using it. Pretty sure that it's not rated as an N or R road though, or whatever their new next class down of letter are which is L I think, so those class of roads will always get used first in any calculations. Are there even any road signs at either end of the park saying Castleknock or City Centre this way?

Frank Ryan Jr

Same issue.
This weekend my girlfriend and I went on a crazy 'Garmin' road trip!
Good thing we were in a 4x4.
It was needed!

I'm appaled this is the case with these devices.
Moreso with the fact that you can't get around it some way.
Whats the point in haveing the thing if you always have to refer to a map?

garydubh

Frank Ryan Jr wrote: »

Same issue.
This weekend my girlfriend and I went on a crazy 'Garmin' road trip!
Good thing we were in a 4x4.
It was needed!

I'm appaled this is the case with these devices.
Moreso with the fact that you can't get around it some way.
Whats the point in haveing the thing if you always have to refer to a map?

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