Narrow Roads in TTN5

linknet · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 872

I'm constantly being routed down extremely narrow minor roads.

Does anyone else have this problem and what settings can I change to persuade it to route on normal "B" Roads.

Roger

Kronenbourg · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 07, 2005 Posts: 10

I used TomTom to get me to a clients site down near East Grinstead and it routed me down a lane (Lowdells Lane I think it was called) which I almost grounded the car on. It was a mud track with foot deep ditches all over the place, branches and logs etc blocking it. Have no idea how I managed to drive along it in a front wheel drive hatchback.

linknet · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 872

That's my point exactly, quite often the entrance to the road looks quite reasonable until you get halfway down and realise it's partially unmade, has become narrow and made turning round virtually impossible. You then have no option but to struggle on and hope it comes out somewhere.

If you were to check on a road map beforehand you would see clearly that this is a very narrow minor road. Why doesn't TomTom know this when even the most basic cheap road map has all this information.

Is there no way to avoid this?

Roger

andy-c1 · Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 8:54 pm Post subject:

yeah i have had that too very annoying
as you say it looks good road to start off with then you get forced to follow the road only to find it has been blocked off
luckerly the last 2 i came across had private rd signs so i kept going
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mrhumphreys · Occasional Visitor Joined: 12/02/2003 00:08:20 Posts: 31

Just got back from Cornwall and managaged to compare my TT3 with a mates TT5.

TT5 seems for favour the smallest, narrowest little lanes with grass growing up the middle. Its not fun reversing for 1/2 mile down a lane that is about 3 inches wider than the car (had to fold the mirrors in).

When we tried the route with TT3 it sensibily took the major roads, which were, of course easier to drive and quicker.

After that we stuck to TT3 for new routes! Much kinder on the paintwork. (I wonder if this little lanes have had the incorrect speed set in the data? Would explain why it thinks we all should drive down them!)

Also noted that TT3 is much better at recalculating routes, when you deviate from the planned route. TT3 would quickly tell you to do a U turn for a while until it was quicker to direct you elsewhere.

TT5 did not ask us to do a single U turn! At one point we were 300 yrds from the cottage, and did not turn left into the road, but straight on to the supermarket. As soon as it realised we had not turned left, it recalculated an alternative route - 1.6 miles! It could just have asked us to do a u-turn. TT3 performed as planned.

TT3 looks like a better bet for the moment.

Has anyone else seen these problems with TT5, or were we just unlucky?

Cheers,

Matthew

Oldie · Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 7:53 am Post subject:

linknet · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 872

Lancaster · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 11, 2005 Posts: 15

Diplo · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 12:18 am Post subject:

I've had TT3 try to take me up a "road" in Shropshire that even farmers wouldn't use - it was a 1in5 mud-bath. However, it was pretty obvious I should avoid it and go to the next proper looking road. Can't say if TT5 is worse in this respect, but I guess it's a problem inherent in all navigation software.
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RoyC · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 7:18 am Post subject:

I don't know yet if this problem is worse in TT5 vs TT3 but it has always been a major problem for drivers of Larger vehicles. I live on a B road which happens to be the most direct route between two larger towns but this road is not fit for larger vehicles. We have experienced a large increase in the number of large vehicles using the road and from a visual survey most of the culprits are using SatNav. Worse still is that when they realise that they cannot make through they have to reverse up a very steep hill to escape. Several large Motor Caravans have been badly damaged as a result and trucks have blocked the road for hours.

This is a major safety issue and when I took it up with TT they essentially said that TT was only designed for cars. Clearly even this isn't true anymore.

This must be addressed before someone is seriously injured.

The lproblem must be in the map quality but whether better maps are available from Teleatlas or whether this will improve should they change to Navteq - who knows.

My assessment is that they should offer a NO B ROAD option unless the start/end points are on that road or the B road is a a necessary part of the route - ie absolutely no other route available.

In TT3 we could make the local roads down to 5mph but even this didn't totally solve the problem.

Roy

Steve999 · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 9:05 am Post subject:

I concur with what RoyC says to some extent as I use a large motorhome for 6 months of the year and have had to learn to live with this factor with my TT3.

The issue is particularly acute in Sothern France and parts of rural Italy where many people use dirt tracks as local roads.

I quickly learned to exercise more discretion over which roads I turned into. Repairs for motorhomes is a lengthy and expensive business. Telling TT to bog off when it instructs me to make a turn has become a humorous sideline while travelling. Review of a route before the journey has become routine

I do agree however that there is a limit to how much discretion needs to be relied upon and that people pay good money to be able to rely on these things to pursue their busy lives. Not everbody is good at exercising discretion and manufacturers need to recognise this when marketing products. A read through these forums will soon convince you that many people do in fact rely on being led.

The product needs to have greater control over road and speed algorithms and I continue to bemoan the loss of the speed selection feature in TT5 as a major backward step. Lowering speed settings on minor roads can eliminate much of this problem I have found.

Steve
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xda · Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 10:41 am Post subject:

linknet · Frequent Visitor Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 872

If you get a feeling of deja-vu whilst reading this it's because I answered another post with it but as it seems applicable here goes again:

I'm not sure what routing algorithm TTN5 is using but it could certainly do with improvement and allow for customisation by the user.

The method previously used by TTN3 of modifying the road speeds to acheive the required result is not strictly correct.

To get the best results a lot of navigation software uses road speeds combined with road preferences. The road speed determines the speed at which you would travel should you use that road and should not be altered just to modify the route taken. The road preference is a weighting factor for each road type and is applied in conjunction with the road speed to determine the calculated route. Navigon 5, for example, also has different settings for each of these parameters depending on whether you are in, or outside, a built up area (Only able to be modified by an add-on at present).

What we need is access to all of these settings in TTN5 to be able to improve the routing to suit our own particular requirements.

Roger

MarkHewitt · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:25 am Post subject:

I get this problem all the time, even last weekend where it took me down a very narrow road which did cut off the corner but only save half a mile on going around on the wide roads and so probably cost me more time, not to mention putting myself and my car at increased risk.

There is a simple classification of roads that all highways departments and ordanance survey knows about. i.e. Roads have to be a certain width for white lines to be painted down the middle, narrower than that they are unpainted.

I would like TomTom to not route me down such narrow roads! It should be one of the options for routing, major roads only, or similar.

RoyC · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:33 am Post subject:

I realise that 2 or 3 people doesn't constitute a 'movement' but how do we go about persuading TT to take this matter seriously? Via the web site is less that helpful.

Roy

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