What do you think of Traffic?

[BaggieBoy]

I think you will only get a visible/audible warning if there is a significant delay caused by the incident. So for example, narrow lanes might be known to be on the route but if they are having no impact on traffic flows they are not flagged up.

[hellybob]

Thanks Baggie. It's rather strange actually wanting to come across a major traffic jam!

[BaggieBoy]

I know what you mean. The interface on TTN7 is much better IMHO, as you can see all incidents with the expected delay at a glance as well as the distance ahead to the first one.

[SumTingWong]

Traffic is pretty accurate in the US. The catch is, you have to know which direction you're traveling as when you're traveling through a stretch of freeway, traffic on both directions are offered to you. You have to know which direction you're traveling to act on the traffic info relevant to you to get the most out of traffic. If you just select detour on all congestions displayed to you, you'll find yourself going the long way unnecessarily. I guess that's why they added the "compass" function to CoPilot! To tell you which direction you're traveling!!!

When traffic works, you will soon discover that the traffic interface was so poorly designed, it makes traffic a dangerous distraction.

For example, when I traveled Northbound on the I-5 freeway through downtown Los Angeles, on the Southbound side, there were 10 congested sections between my home and downtown LA. On the Northbound side (my direction), there were 3 congested sections. When I clicked on the pop-up sidebar traffic notice, I was shown a list of those sections, 13 in all. The brief info on that list did not tell me which direction the listed incidents were for. So I had to click on each individual incident to see more info. /On the incidents list, the direction of each incident needs to be included so the users don't have to go through all of them and put them in danger from having their eyes not on the road. Or better yet, only offer the incidents relevant to the users' travel directions/ When I got to the detailed screen of each incident, I was offered ONLY 2 buttons, one to get back to the list of incidents, one to avoid that congested section. There were no "Ignore" button so I wouldn't be offered that congested section again! So after I went through the 13 incidents and selected to avoid the 3 congested sections on the Northbound side, and was about 3 miles away from my exit to begin my detour, the traffic sidebar popped up again! This time with 11 incidents. After I went through that 11 incidents. I found out the 3 acted upon Northbound incidents were no longer listed (as expected). But the 10 Southbound incidents were still there on the list!!! The last incident was the new incident on my detour route. When I selected detour on that last incident, I was too late and already in the middle of that congestion. /There needs to be an [Ignore] button to tell CoPilot not to include incidents you have already reviewed and not interested. Apparently, in CoPilot 7, there was an [Ignore] button but they screwed up CP8 somehow and that button is gone/

ALK needs to fix their traffic feature and needs to do it fast. Because if I get into an accident while getting through their traffic minefield, I will sue! I know they already has a disclaimer but that does not allow them to put out poorly designed, dangerous products on the market.
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[dangerous_dom]

Can someone please answer this question; is Traffic meant to automatically reroute you based on Traffic info or not? Because it has given me warnings but never actually reroutes or asks me if it wants to. I actually came to a completely closed road today, which Copilot new about and even marked it as red - but it still tried to route me down it!

Whats going on? how do i use it? am i missing some setting? I cant even see how to manually reroute around something while driving.

Also, the UI is poor and hard to understand and use when driving. So far its been a waste of money.

Any tips? I thought the whole idea was to find better routes, whats the point in traffic warnings if i can do anything about them?

[Wildoat]

Hi - as far as I can tell there is no auto reroute option - it just indicates a problem and also it does not appear to increase the journey time by any proposed delay!!

To avoid the incident you need to bring up the traffic screen - touch the traffic bar on the right and then you can see the incidents and get more detail - on that screen there is an icon you can select that will avoid the incident but as a previous poster has mentioned often it shows incidents that are on the other carraigeway so you need to make sure you select the right one!

I have TMC traffic on an in built sat nav in the car but use CoPilot as well for speed cameras and I must say the CoPilot traffic info is similar but its use and implementation of that info is pants!

W

[andrewbillen]

Totally agree that traffic is rubbish. The information is displayed in a very user unfriendly way and incidents are not recalculated in the eta so it is hard to tell whether it is worth invoking a detour or not. It is a shame because text to speech and other innovations in v8 work very well. I wonder if ALK will work on a new interface and methodology.

[SumTingWong]

I'm not making an excuse for CoPilot here but in terms of finding out if a detour is worthwhile or not, one can try to look at the reported speed of one road and compare it with the alternatives.

For example, in the US, CoPilot only reports traffic on freeways whose speed limit is around 65mph. Alternatives to freeways are surface roads whose speed limits is around 45mph. With this knowledge, I only select detour from freeways to surface roads when the freeway speed is reported as below 45mph. Otherwise, I just ignore the traffic warnings and stay on the freeways.

[marko123]

I've given up on the so called "Live" traffic...IF it warns you of traffic it is hopelessly out of date- it'll warn you of holdups and accidents an hour after they happen...too damn late.

Google maps with the traffic layer on has greater detail and is almost real time in comparison.

ALK do NOT deserve the cash their customers have spent on them....fix your existing products before releasing any more new ones please!

[marko123]

I've given up on the so called "Live" traffic...IF it warns you of traffic it is hopelessly out of date- it'll warn you of holdups and accidents an hour after they happen...too damn late.

Google maps with the traffic layer on has greater detail and is almost real time in comparison.

ALK do NOT deserve the cash their customers have spent on them....fix your existing products before releasing any more new ones please!

[coastersteve]

Just a quick heads up that Traffic is £9.99 this weekend...

http://www.alk.eu.com/buynow/liveservices/

I thought for a tenner I'd give it a bash :-)

[2216]

I have Copilot 8 with traffic on my Tmobile compact V phone and also have a TT XL Live IQ both running at the same time . The TT HD traffic is 98% correct while the Copilot like my old Sony TMC satnav is about 60% correct with lots of false positives.

[coastersteve]

It looks like we might be getting something they're calling "Active Traffic" soon. It seems to be available in the states and I hope they roll it out soon here.

http://blog.us.copilotlive.net/?p=1395

*Please note ActiveTraffic is only available for U.S. customers

[Wildoat]

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