TTN 5.21 terrible routing advice

[cageordie]

A couple of times in the recent past TTN has given me terrible advice and shown terrible POI information.

The first time was on the eastern edge of Death Valley. I needed fuel and the only places it would tell me about were off 395, a hundred miles west of me. There I was closer to Las Vegas than to 395. As it was I was only maybe ten or fifteen miles from a gas station on US95 near Beatty. If I had believed it, as a tourist might, I would have been our of gas in the middle of nowhere.

Two weeks ago I was in Nevada, south of I80 in the Ruby Lake area. I wanted to continue south to US50, which is supposed to be more scenic than I80. So on leaving the lake I rejected the north route and asked for an alternative, instead of routing me straight down SR788 and SR3 it told me to turn right and head over the hills. Well, a little while later I saw a sign that said this single track dirt road was the Poney Express route in 1860/1861. Well, this is all very historic, but it's not a wise place for person to be without a backup vehicle and ham radio. Eventually I came to a washout that I looked too boggy to cross safely so I returned to SR1. Half an hour later I was back on paved road, but about ten miles north of US50 it directed me onto tiny dirt roads again. By now I had recalculated for simply the best route to Reno, NV so it wasn't anything to do with rejecting the initial route. This time I ignored it, it was dusk and I was still six hours from home and didn't want to spend them in the mountains.

The most recent incident was Saturday, I was heading from Willits CA to Mendocino, CA on CA20 which is a well maintained road. Something like five miles from the coast it directed me onto dirt roads again. This time I was in my Passat so I just ignored it.

The major problem with the software seems to be that it can't tell the difference between the different classes of road. It seems to know interstates, major roads and then everything else. So a well paved state road is seen as the same class as the lowest grade of dirt road.

It has been a long time since Tomtom updated this software and fixed their bugs, this is far from impressive. As a software engineer who ships a product based on more than two gigabytes of source I have absolutely no sympathy for their poor product quality. In rural areas of the US you could die taking their advice. You may think that is overstating the case, but here's where it was telling me to go next in Nevada, there's nothing in that direction for 200 miles and the nearest people are probably twenty miles from this spot. The first rise conceals a dip with foot deep mud in it.



Here's the Google map for the spot, the picture is taken looking to the north west, I had come from the north east. If I was going to follow the Pony Express trail I'd have needed to head to the south west.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=39.94008,-115.751883&spn=0.002842,0.004989&t=h&om=1


Tomtom does get you to some interesting places.

[alix776]

just as a though you havent got it set to shortest have you
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Oh the joys of being a courier.
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[cageordie]

No. I haven't. The route it had chosen was actually to continue straight up the hills for a few miles and then turn about 135 degrees left and cut back over to the Pony Express trail again. So it was taking two sides of a triangle.

A previous routing issue was on a trip from California to Vancouver Island, Canada via the Port Angeles to Victoria ferry. On reaching Olympia, WA it directed me up I5 and then onto routes 16 and 3 which pick their way through urban sprawl and eventually back to US101 instead of taking US101. Google maps shows the faster route.

http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=port+angeles,+wa&daddr=olympia,+wa&ie=UTF8&om=1


I sanity check the routes against a paper map now, for Nevada I ordered the official state map, which shows their maintained roads, and a high detail topographic map for those times when I am in an off-road vehicle.

I am actually tempted to start running my old Garmin GPSV as a sanity check against the Tomtom on these long runs, you can waste a lot of time with what looks like a minor routing difference. In the Olympia to Port Angeles case it took me through hours of traffic. The Seattle and Tacoma areas are not a good place to visit in daylight hours unless you want to spend a lot of time looking at other cars. I'm doing it again next weekend, but this time I'll take my own route and just turn the volume down while it goes through the endless "turn around when possible" prompts.

[alan_sh]

I had this in Wales last week. I got it to plot a route and the first left was up a farm track. Even worse, I was on a motorcycle..... Needless to say, I ignored that.....

Alan

[peterc10]

Hmm .... now heres a dilemma Death Valley California ... or .... Wales.

Ive been to both and know which I would prefer not to get lost in
_________________
Peter
HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount

[MJN]

Indeed... what with all those Welsh about..

[Eldar]

[realistic]

Not really sure what it is you think us Welsh do to sheep:-
just remember after we *£$% them you eat them

[Eldar]

*£$% them ? I always suspected that Welsh is a very interesting language rich in idiomatic expressions.

[peterc10]

[Eldar]

I feel that self-moderation is in order, so I'll shut up 8)

[bedbug]

Too funny guys!

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