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Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 6:33 pm Post subject: Go 530 not clever routing
All seems fine here in Kent so far, but when in Dorset near Thorncombe (very rural) it got a bit silly, it was forever choosing extremely narrow windy roads that have no lay-bys to let oncoming traffic pass and 10mph is the sort of speed that's safe. What I really needed the 530 to do was to pick a route that would get you onto a decent-ish road, a B road say, as quickly as possible and take that road as far as possible, even if it added a mile or so. This would have been quicker as well. I could force the 530 to use the better roads using itineraries, but it would be handy to have a menu option to find a route using good quality roads as much as possible.
Joined: Mar 01, 2005 Posts: 1513 Location: West Mids
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:46 pm Post subject:
to the forums Brad.
Which routing option did you use? The "shortest" route will go as straight as possible regardless of the road type. Normally the "fastest" option will use the best quality roads possible. _________________ Gerry
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Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 1039 Location: East Sussex
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject:
i'm down here at the moment and it does seem to choose narrow lanes and as i didn't know where i was at the time i'm not sure if there was a more decent road or not ,or it could be that there are not many good roads around here that it sends you on these roads
I'll try check tomorrow or the next when we go out and about again _________________ TomTom 5001
Joined: Jun 04, 2005 Posts: 19991 Location: West and Southwest London
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject:
I was in Devon last week (with a trailer ) and the TT sent us up some very narrow lanes, and at least twice it attempted to send us into completely overgrown dirt tracks.
We're pretty used to it now. In our family, any road with grass growing in a strip down the middle is referred to as "a TomTom route"
Trouble is, it seems that all the TomTom uses to decide its route is speed limit. As all these tiny tracks are de-restricted/National speed limit, the poor brainless TomTom thinks they will be quick.
Trouble is, it seems that all the TomTom uses to decide its route is speed limit. As all these tiny tracks are de-restricted/National speed limit, the poor brainless TomTom thinks they will be quick.
It cannot be quite as simple as that or TT would take you on declassified roads all the time. But it does have difficulty differentiating some roads - especially in France where I do a lot of my driving.
Perhaps it is corrected by IQ routing? _________________ Alan
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Which routing option did you use? The "shortest" route will go as straight as possible regardless of the road type. Normally the "fastest" option will use the best quality roads possible.
I used the 'fastest' route option. Perhaps software updates will eventually sort it, the maps are fine, it's just the decision making that leaves much to be desired when there are many 'dirt track' type roads to choose from and it seems not to care that a slight diversion to a nearby B road would be much faster and safer.
Joined: Aug 14, 2005 Posts: 170 Location: Hull East Yorks
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:48 pm Post subject:
Its nigh on impossible to get a good route when towing a caravan, always taking you down small roads, however I find that turning i,Q routing OFF helps a lot......(Does anyone think the tomtom mapping is getting worse rather than better?) _________________ Neil.......ttgo..Mio p550...2.8 lwb exeed pajero. where cant I go..
(Does anyone think the tomtom mapping is getting worse rather than better?)
Yep. But since V7 I thought its routing was off. New maps and V8 and still it takes you down some odd liitle roads. Thankfully they have left the itns in for caravan owners!
the problem is in the classification of roads. I was in a large town recently and the route tried to take me down a track behind houses and across open ground. pot holed and rutted, it was suitable for no more than 15mph, but was obviously classed as 30mph and because it cut the corner off my route, should've been quicker.
its the same with country lanes. they may have a 30, 40 50 mph speed limit, but it doesn't mean you are willing to go that fast, or that you can go that fast if you have to stop and squeeze past others.
the opposite can be said. sometimes the route will take you on a 15 mile 'detour' along a motorway to save 1 minute of journey time............. most people wouldn't bother, particularly with the cost of the extra petrol.
for the former 'country lane' situation, Narrow Lane POIs might help, along with actual journey times derived from user experience. for the latter, some sensible compromise between total distance and total time is required. I often check a 'fastest route' against the 'shortest distance' option and if there is a big difference in distance, look more closely to see if a compromise is possible.
I made a similar point recently in a post from someone with routing problems with a caravan.
I think its a limitation of the information available from the maps (afterall the maps don't say how wide a road actually is, or what the road surface is like, or if hedges need cutting back), along with a simplistic model of journey times - ie either fastest time or shortest distance. In time, user experience and feedback will improve the former and technology and user demand should improve the latter. Intelligent routing is an attempt to improve this situation by incorporating (albeit in a simplistic form) actual journey times experienced by users rather than theoretical journey times based on map information.
At the end of the day, what's the alternative? To get a paper map that might have been printed 2 years ago, look at your start and end points and visualise a route based on intuition, taking into account the road colour (road classification) and direction? If you think that's better than TT, then you can use that method for country routes and switch to TT for urban routes. Or, you can examine the TT route and choose alternatives by selecting 'Go Via'.
TT is a tool, helpful in some instances, not so helpful in others, but it is based on relatively new technology and like any technology, it is meant to supplement rather than replace brain power. We tend to expect too much.
the problem is in the classification of roads. I was in a large town recently and the route tried to take me down a track behind houses and across open ground. pot holed and rutted, it was suitable for no more than 15mph, but was obviously classed as 30mph and because it cut the corner off my route, should've been quicker.
its the same with country lanes. they may have a 30, 40 50 mph speed limit, but it doesn't mean you are willing to go that fast, or that you can go that fast if you have to stop and squeeze past others.
the opposite can be said. sometimes the route will take you on a 15 mile 'detour' along a motorway to save 1 minute of journey time............. most people wouldn't bother, particularly with the cost of the extra petrol.
for the former 'country lane' situation, Narrow Lane POIs might help, along with actual journey times derived from user experience. for the latter, some sensible compromise between total distance and total time is required. I often check a 'fastest route' against the 'shortest distance' option and if there is a big difference in distance, look more closely to see if a compromise is possible.
I made a similar point recently in a post from someone with routing problems with a caravan.
I think its a limitation of the information available from the maps (afterall the maps don't say how wide a road actually is, or what the road surface is like, or if hedges need cutting back), along with a simplistic model of journey times - ie either fastest time or shortest distance. In time, user experience and feedback will improve the former and technology and user demand should improve the latter. Intelligent routing is an attempt to improve this situation by incorporating (albeit in a simplistic form) actual journey times experienced by users rather than theoretical journey times based on map information.
At the end of the day, what's the alternative? To get a paper map that might have been printed 2 years ago, look at your start and end points and visualise a route based on intuition, taking into account the road colour (road classification) and direction? If you think that's better than TT, then you can use that method for country routes and switch to TT for urban routes. Or, you can examine the TT route and choose alternatives by selecting 'Go Via'.
TT is a tool, helpful in some instances, not so helpful in others, but it is based on relatively new technology and like any technology, it is meant to supplement rather than replace brain power. We tend to expect too much.
I think you're probably right in most all that you've said there but choosing alternative routes successfully isn't possible always in unfamiliar countryside areas, all minor roads look the same on the map (apart from one thing). I have found one way to guess at a good route though, then it's just a case of forcing the TomTom to use it. Calculate a 'fastest' route, then look at it on the map and look for anywhere that it's diverted away from a coloured road and force it back onto it using 'Find Alternative' and 'Avoid Part of Route' and/or 'Travel Via'. Like paper maps, the coloured roads tend to be better roads that people actually use to get from A to B. The bit I don't get is that this info is in the TomTom maps, so why doesn't it use it more or at least give it as a menu option instead of taking us onto un-named roads and the like?
well you said it in your post: roads look the same on the map. imagine looking at a map,.... say Spain, Italy or any foreign country and trying, as a TT programmer, how you would make a TT unit choose particular routes........
the way it does it now is simplistic, either shortest distance, or shortest time. the former can take you down dirt tracks, and the latter 20 miles longer than you need to travel
the journey modelling needs to change perhaps using some kind if 'fuzzy logic' to find a compromise between the 2.
identifying dirt tracks and impossibly narrow roads probably needs the inclusion of another category of road to identify it as narrow, regardless of its official road. that way you could avoid them when you plan a route, or a warning could be made, as happens with toll roads
there are a few POIs of narrow roads knocking around, that's a starts, although one persons definition of narrow may be different from another's.
Last week I needed to travel to Blackburn, and to get there I could have gone East or West to get over the moors. TT sent me East along the motorway for 7 miles, it then took me off the motorway, and to take the 4th exit off the roundabout......that would have put me back onto the motorway that I had just left and would have, if I had done what it said, and send me back about 14 miles from were I had just come from, 7 of which I had just done
I have used TT Navigator for many years on a pocket PC with a Socket GPS unit, one trip was from Turkey to UK and then back to Turkey. There was no mapping in Turkey but used it from Ancona in Italy all the way to Wigan and then back to Turkey weeks later. In those thousands of miles TT Navigator never gave me a wrong direction. Hope this wrong routing is not going to be a future problem with v8 maps.
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to the forums Brad.
) and the TT sent us up some very narrow lanes, and at least twice it attempted to send us into completely overgrown dirt tracks.
