Bad part of town

 

Got a Nuvi 660 which I loaned to my daughter for a trip from Orange County to downtown Los Angeles. The route it gave her coming home took her on surface streets through some parts of town I would not go through if given a choice. Is there any way to set up the Nuvi to avoid certain routes or areas?

Thanks for any help...

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When you set up a route

You can use via to avoid certain streets or areas... but to my knowledge you can't have the gps do it automatically...

--
It is terrible to speak well and be wrong. -Sophocles snɥɔnıɥdoɐ aka ʎɹɐƃ

things to avoid

You can set up some different avoidances but not areas of a city,
wrench>navigation>avoidances and it will list the things to avoid, The only way to avoid parts of a city would be with a mapping program such as mapsource and that would have to be done in advance and not on the fly.

--
Jerry...Jacksonville,Fl Nüvi1450,Nuvi650,Nuvi 2495 and Mapsource.

Know your route generally BEFORE you leave.

This is probably a good example where a GPS should only be used to ASSIST one in getting to where they need to be AFTER the user has figured out the probably route first on a large paper map or online.

You can always have the GPS show you the route before you leave by checking the turns and seeing where it sends you and then checking that against a map or your own knowledge of an area. If you find a place it wants you to go then you can either just avoid certain routes and let the GPS recalculate as you go, or insert a way point to force the GPS to route around an area.

In general for something like an Orange County to LA trip, I would first check the maps and get an idea before you leave of which highways you need to take and which exit you need to use. Then you can kind of ignore the GPS if it tries to send you other ways that do not make sense and head to the exit you know you want. Let the GPS recalculate the route after you have avoided the area.

Cheers,
PT

--
Garmin nüvi 200 (my first GPS), 780, & 3700 Series. And a Mac user.

Vias are your friend

You can tell your Nuvi to avoid certain types of roads but not individual roads or areas.

Viewing your route first and using a Via to alter it works fairly well. After it starts routing you, tap the green bar at the top and then select Map to get an overview of your route. If you don't like it, go back to the main menu and select Where To and select something that would cause it to plot a different route. I often zoom in the map and then select an intersection that's in the area in which I want to travel. If you pick something too close, it might route you back again. Anyway, tap the Go button and it will ask if you want to use this as a new destination or to insert it as a Via point. Select Via point and it will recalculate a new route.

Try experimenting in simulaiton mode and you'll get the hang of it.

Know the feeling and agree

I appreciate your concern as I've travelled into dangerous neighborhoods, unknowingly during some of my travels. I'm in agreement with the suggestions given and add that one should select "faster time" under navigation to keep you on the freeways and larger arterial routes. The 660 does not have an option to have pre-planned routes imported from mapsource so that won't work. The 7xx and 8xx nuvi series can do this. Constantly entering via points while in transit would be a real pain so Guttermouth's suggestion is a good one.

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Peter

Bad part of town

Thanks all for your suggestions.

I've lived in Orange County for quite a while so driving to LA and avoiding some areas is second nature. My daughter on the other hand is new to this so looking at a map is not very helpful. The GPS is great because she can concentrate on driving instead of trying to read Mapquest directions on the freeway.

I found that the best way to

I found that the best way to use the GPS is to put in your destination, let the thing calculate your route and zoom out to see the proposed route. That way you can avoid uncontrolled intersections and unexpected trips around perimeters if you have fastest rout selected. You can also use by way of feature to go around trouble spots. The GPS is great if you are in a strange city or looking for an address. The unit is always polite regardless how many times you miss a turn and it gets you to the desired destination.

Added Feature to nüvi 880

A "Custom Avoids" feature is one of the things that has been added in the nüvi 880 for both "Avoid Area" and "Avoid Road".

I have already found a use for it while planning a trip to Michigan that would have taken me through a section of I-96 that will be closed beginning July 14th.

Bill

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nüvi 880 - nüvi 760 - nüvi 660 - StreetPilot 2620 - Portland, Oregon

Add a Via Point

I've use a "Via" Point on several occasions. I usually use a Road Intersection as a turn point and the route straightens out and avoids going straight through the middle of town. I've saved them and just plug them in as needed.

--
Jihad THIS!! Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

And make sure

And make sure you have a .mp3 file of Jim Croce singing "Big, Bad Leroy Brown" to use as a proximity alert.

twisted

--
MrKenFL- "Money can't buy you happiness .. But it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery." NUVI 260, Nuvi 1490LMT & Nuvi 2595LMT all with 2014.4 maps !

Green Bar for Overvies of Route -

johnc wrote:

After it starts routing you, tap the green bar at the top and then select Map to get an overview of your route.

johnc - I've had my Nuvi 660 for over a year, and can't remember reading about the green bar. What a great way to see your prospective route! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for sharing that hint.

Read?

trigon wrote:

johnc - I've had my Nuvi 660 for over a year, and can't remember reading about the green bar. What a great way to see your prospective route! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for sharing that hint.

Read? Your Nuvi came with something to read? wink

avoid areas or change route

I often just add a via point that makes the GPS route you a different way. For example going from Buffalo to New Jersey the GPS will send you via th 90 toll route but if you add Sayre as a via point the route is slightly shorter and avoids the most of the tolls. Sasme could be done to avoid an area of the city.

Owner's Manual -

johnc wrote:
trigon wrote:

johnc - I've had my Nuvi 660 for over a year, and can't remember reading about the green bar. What a great way to see your prospective route! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for sharing that hint.

Read? Your Nuvi came with something to read? wink

It sure did. It's for the Nuvi 610/660, on a CD in eleven - that's right 11 - different languages.

Maps and GPSs

Neither maps nor GPSs do any good in avoiding dangerous parts of town if you are traveling in an unfamiliar community. It would be nice to have "high crime areas" delineated in GPS databases and be able to chose them as avoidances.

Alas, that will NEVER happen in our politically correct culture. "Civil Rights" leaders would instantly complain about "racial profiling" or other perceived offenses and would shut down the effort in no time. Everyone knows what happens when taxis refuse to service or pizza places decline to deliver to dangerous parts of town. Self-righteous "leaders" cry about "discrimination," and even big national corporations bow to their wishes in order to avoid a shakedown.

Of course, the reality is that it will cause the deaths of taxi drivers and pizza deliverers, but we're willing to sacrifice hard working and peaceful individuals to avoid "offending" certain groups.

God bless America!

Red Lining

Maybe you can find out how Pizza Hut or Domino's Pizza did their redlining?

It's a good idea but I doubt you will ever get this as a built-in feature. I'm sure the same people that pressured the pizza makers for trying to protect their employees will pressure Garmin and other to remove such a feature because of discrimination against poor people in crime-ridden areas.

Learned more from here, though

trigon wrote:
johnc wrote:
trigon wrote:

johnc - I've had my Nuvi 660 for over a year, and can't remember reading about the green bar. What a great way to see your prospective route! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for sharing that hint.

Read? Your Nuvi came with something to read? wink

It sure did. It's for the Nuvi 610/660, on a CD in eleven - that's right 11 - different languages.

Both my 350 and 760 had PDF manuals to supplement the quick start guide. Yeah, I'm a manual reader. I still learned more here than from the manuals, though.

Manuals -

johnc wrote:
trigon wrote:
johnc wrote:
trigon wrote:

johnc - I've had my Nuvi 660 for over a year, and can't remember reading about the green bar. What a great way to see your prospective route! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Thanks for sharing that hint.

Read? Your Nuvi came with something to read? wink

It sure did. It's for the Nuvi 610/660, on a CD in eleven - that's right 11 - different languages.

Both my 350 and 760 had PDF manuals to supplement the quick start guide. Yeah, I'm a manual reader. I still learned more here than from the manuals, though.

I, too, have learned a lot from this site. Guys like you are a constant source of knowledge. I did find the green bar mentioned toward the front of the manual. Guess it just didn't register - or I forgot I had read it. Again, thanks for the info, and keep reading them manuals.

While I like my Nuvi 200, I

While I like my Nuvi 200, I have always complained about the way the unit routes. This is one area where TOMTOM does better (at least my PDA based tomtom did). When I set a destination and the GPS found a route, it displayed the full route onscreen and gave me the option of having it calculate a different route. I could do that until it picked a route I liked. With garmin, you had to trick the unit into picking a route you want by setting via points. I really wish garmin would add that feature.

Easy Solution

oski65 wrote:

Got a Nuvi 660 which I loaned to my daughter for a trip from Orange County to downtown Los Angeles. The route it gave her coming home took her on surface streets through some parts of town I would not go through if given a choice. Is there any way to set up the Nuvi to avoid certain routes or areas?

Thanks for any help...

I too live in Orange County and have a Nuvi 760. Anytime I find myself in the vicinity of Los Angeles I simply push "Where to" then "Go Home." It's a quick reminder that there is no need to venture into LA and I really need to get home asap.

This will never be implemented...IMO

Having a "bad part of town" as a GPSr route avoidance is too much of a political hot potato for Garmin to implement. They won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, ever. Who decides which is "bad" and "not bad"? Could you imagine if Garmin decided that you live in a "bad part of town"?

And I agree, previewing a route on a paper map or setting via points to force the route away from a section of town is absolutely useless if you're not familiar with the area.

In this case (for example, a tourist), a paper map and a GPSr are equally in the same boat, i.e. they both would not tell the tourist which areas are bad or not.

Set up some POI's in that

Set up some POI's in that general area, and use them to set a proximity alert for a reasonable distance.

Or 1 POI in the middle with a BIG proximity zone around it. That's how I've used my GPS in the past to warn me of No-Fly zones smile

--
nüvi 200

functionality without locations

Nitrate wrote:

Having a "bad part of town" as a GPSr route avoidance is too much of a political hot potato for Garmin to implement. They won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, ever. Who decides which is "bad" and "not bad"? Could you imagine if Garmin decided that you live in a "bad part of town"?

You're certainly right about the political problems of Garmin deciding what constitutes "bad" parts of town, but if they just add the *ability* to avoid an area, selected by the user, they could avoid the political fallout and we could get the functionality.

That Feature Has Been Added

-Nomad- wrote:
Nitrate wrote:

Having a "bad part of town" as a GPSr route avoidance is too much of a political hot potato for Garmin to implement. They won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, ever. Who decides which is "bad" and "not bad"? Could you imagine if Garmin decided that you live in a "bad part of town"?

You're certainly right about the political problems of Garmin deciding what constitutes "bad" parts of town, but if they just add the *ability* to avoid an area, selected by the user, they could avoid the political fallout and we could get the functionality.

That ability has been added in the nüvi 880; both to avoid areas and/or specific roads.

Bill

--
nüvi 880 - nüvi 760 - nüvi 660 - StreetPilot 2620 - Portland, Oregon

Not constrained by PC in Japan

Honda has decided to add the "high crime area" feature to GPSs in their cars, at least in the Japanese market. It will be implemented in about two years. See the article, dated April of this year at http://tinyurl.com/6jpmpy. I doubt if they have the cajones to implement this in the U.S.

I've looked for highly localized crime rate data by zip code (and smaller divisions as well) in vain. If I were to compile a nationwide list through contributors from poi-factory, what would you think? Perhaps contributors could send me a lat/long coordinate, along with the length of the radius to be used for a proximity alert? But then again, proximity alerts are set at the file level, not individual POI entries.

Anyone have any ideas on how we could make this work?

Just as I suspected....

Look at this article from U.S. News & World Report on the Honda GPS: http://tinyurl.com/6b6b9n

"...the automakers (and makers of portable GPS devices) are scared to death of implementing this. No one minds going second or third once there's consensus, but being the pioneer is quite another matter." A Honda spokesman in the U.S. told Technoride the company has "no pending plan to add this feature to our system."

If we're going to get this feature, we'll have to build it ourselves!

Seems feasable to me for the

Seems feasable to me for the sat link to merely idicate the nationwide percentage of the area's ranked crime status. After all, the GPS lists point's of high interest, so what could be wrong with giving the dis-interest pertaining to locals linked to crime rate stats obtained via the sat link and the web's D-base on the national crime rate? jmho

??

Please educate me. How would the "sat link" be capable of doing this?

.

GPS satellites are not capable of accessing that sort (or ANY sort) of databases.

Where there's a will, there's a way

Motorcycle Mama wrote:

GPS satellites are not capable of accessing that sort (or ANY sort) of databases.

True, but MSN direct receiver is able to access the databases. These databases can be accessed from US Department of Justice and FBI:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

Moreover, Garmin doesn't have to suggest that a certain area is bad. Instead, the maps can have levels of shades reflecting the intensity of crimes. The shading feature can be user selectable, similar to choosing day/night/auto mode. Nuvi 880 is already capable of avoiding a certain area.

Moon

Data not suitable

Unfortunately, the links you point to only provide data down to MSA or city level, useless for avoiding certain particularly dangerous neighborhoods.

It might be wise to avoid large swaths of Washington, D.C., for example, but it does no good for a traveler to know that D.C. as a whole has the worst crime rate in the nation. There are relatively safe areas to visit in the nations capitol. What we need is information on the zip code level, or preferably even more finely cut to the block or census tract level. Anyone have any sources for that?

Good point. It'd take MSN to

Good point. It'd take MSN to handshake that info if the mappers didn't include it in updates. My bad.

My wish list

Following GPS, I did end up to add gas in a scary neighborhood last week…

It would be nice if we have a POI of crime occurred spots of past 10 years (from police database?)
And a smart routing offers minimum spots along the path with the option of “no more than set numbers of spots within set yards of radius anywhere along the path”.

.

That's nice to have on a wish list. Just realize that it will never happen. Too subjective. Too controversial. Difficult to compile and manage. No real financial advantage for the GPS manufacturer to include. etc.

Avoiding areas

The GPS in thr Jaguar lets you name streets to avoid and then recalculates the route around those streets. I don't remember who the manufacturer is but the CD disk says Alpine (I think) Perhaps Garmin could learn something from them that they could legally use.

--
nuvi 785 nuvi 350, nuvi 270, GTM 20, jag in dash, mercedes in dash.

GPS is only a tool

calvin888 wrote:

Following GPS, I did end up to add gas in a scary neighborhood last week…

With all due respect, I have 2 suggestions:

Don't let your tank get "dangerously" low before you start looking for a station. That way, you won't HAVE to stop at the nearest one, for whatever reason (it might be closed).

--
Magellan Maestro 4250// MIO C310X

oski65 wrote: Got a Nuvi

oski65 wrote:

Got a Nuvi 660 which I loaned to my daughter for a trip from Orange County to downtown Los Angeles. The route it gave her coming home took her on surface streets through some parts of town I would not go through if given a choice. Is there any way to set up the Nuvi to avoid certain routes or areas?

Thanks for any help...

Unfortunately the 660 doesn't support "via" or way points. Since you can't use waypoints (via) you can plan several routes to intermediate destinations. In planning the trip I would suggest that you plan multiple routes that will, in total, make up your real Go To destination. In this way each route will take your daughter from one safer place to another and she can load the next route until she gets to downtown LA.

traffic jam

ka1167 wrote:
calvin888 wrote:

Following GPS, I did end up to add gas in a scary neighborhood last week…

With all due respect, I have 2 suggestions:

Don't let your tank get "dangerously" low before you start looking for a station. That way, you won't HAVE to stop at the nearest one, for whatever reason (it might be closed).

Thanks for the advice, you are absolutely right about it. I was 1/3 tank before the hour-long traffic jam, it consumed 1/4 tank of gas in almost standing still. sad

Biggest beef

draksig wrote:

While I like my Nuvi 200, I have always complained about the way the unit routes. This is one area where TOMTOM does better (at least my PDA based tomtom did). When I set a destination and the GPS found a route, it displayed the full route onscreen and gave me the option of having it calculate a different route. I could do that until it picked a route I liked. With garmin, you had to trick the unit into picking a route you want by setting via points. I really wish garmin would add that feature.

I agree. This is my biggest beef with my Nuvi. I have to jump through hoops to get it to lead me the way I want to go without an endless stream of "Recalculating"s, and I shouldn't have to do that. Via Points or Detour buttons help but are not always available or as user-friendly as what draksig suggests.

--
JMoo On

Just A Matter Of Time

Motorcycle Mama wrote:

That's nice to have on a wish list. Just realize that it will never happen. Too subjective. Too controversial. Difficult to compile and manage. No real financial advantage for the GPS manufacturer to include. etc.

I understand and mostly agree with your point, but in terms of financial incentives, it's just a matter of time before there's a lawsuit on this. Somebody's loved ones are going to sue a GPS manufacturer because the GPS told the driver, a tourist, to unnecessarily go through a notoriously bad neighborhood and the driver got killed following instructions. GPS is different than a map in this way. You're trusting the device to lead you. I know, the GPS manufacturer will fall back on Terms of Use and say "It's not our responsibility", but if the survivors have a sympathetic victim and get a jury trial and a good attorney, it's not hard to foresee a company potentially losing millions. We've had weirder verdicts than this.

I think the way to go is for the GPS maker to put in an Avoid Area feature with a user-settable perimeter and then let other people develop POI files to set the high crime areas. That's what you focus on: crime, not income. The manufacturers stay neutral on what the the "bad neighborhoods" are. (Downside: sometimes, "You can't get there from here".)

--
JMoo On

Re: GPS is only a tool

ka1167 wrote:

With all due respect, I have 2 suggestions:

Don't let your tank get "dangerously" low before you start looking for a station. That way, you won't HAVE to stop at the nearest one, for whatever reason (it might be closed).

And your other suggestion is?

Oops

poidog wrote:

And your other suggestion is?

Brain cramp !

--
Magellan Maestro 4250// MIO C310X

Avoiding bad areas

I can relate to the comments. I'm retired and love to drive, visited all 48 states and would LOVE to know what areas in some of the larger cities to avoid! Some of the visitor areas at teh state lines provide sme guidance but not universally helpful.
One of the obvious issues is that one person's bad area is another's home! Go figure!
Might work if we use the tourist approach and list areas we SHOULD visit, then by definition we get the areas we SHOULDN'T visit. Thoughts?

--
Tom

How to implement that feature???

Here's an idea. A TourGuide gives a proximity alert that is User adjustable in a radius around a waypoint. If you wanted to avoid a certain neighborhood, make a waypoint in the middle of it (maybe using a mapping program) and set a TourGuide alert with a radius big enough to encompass the whole area you want to avoid.

This is do-able with the technology we have available. However, all it will do is give you a warning.

Now, if Garmin added a feature to the software that worked similarly for defining areas to avoid, all that is needed is for the Routing logic to check for those areas and route you around them.

Sounds simple enough...

This is a fascinating topic

This is a fascinating topic and one of great interest to me as a retired geographic information system professional. Recently, I decided it would be good to put some proximity alerts in my GPS for high crime areas. My idea was that when we have visitors that are new to the area I would just give them my GPS when they traveled here in West Palm Beach knowing that they would be warned if approaching a high crime area. My first thought was to contact the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office to get a map of high crime areas. I know they have to exist to support the operational side of the department. I never received a reply to any of my emails so I have to assume that either their website has the wrong address or that this is a politically hot topic or they have some other reason for not disseminating that information. If their goal is to keep the citizens safe you would think this would be a high priority.

Conceptually I see no reason why one could not take a polygon delineating a high crime area and create POIs and proximity alerts around the boundary of the polygon. That should work just fine. Tha challenge is getting the data for the "bad" areas.

--
Garmin Emap, Garmin C340, Garmin Nuvi650

Middle Points

If a parent knows the areas to avoid, I believe you can program interim stops on a route that will avoid dangerous areas. 

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RKF (Brookeville, MD) Garmin Nuvi 660, 360 & Street Pilot

You don't need a GPS to tell

You don't need a GPS to tell if you are in a bad area. Look around. Do all the windows have bars on them? Do you see a lot of graffiti? Are people hanging around with nothing to do and starring at you? Why are are you in the area in the first place? Don't look at your gps for answers. Find a place to make a u turn and leave! smile

--
Garmin Nuvi 765t

That would be a killer

That would be a killer feature - if you could upload a "Bad Area" map overlay and then have an Avoidance set for it!

Never Gonna Happen

This would never happen. If a GPS manufacturer did try to implement something like this they would get sued in a heartbeat. Imagine being a business owner and all of a sudden you are blacklisted because someone arbitrarily decided you are located in a "bad" area.

And who decides which areas are bad? High crime rate? High drug use? High percentage of minorities?

Like someone already said, just use your brain and eyes. If you think you are heading for a "bad" area, turn around and take another route.

not a good fit for POI Factory

We will not be posting this type of file at POI Factory. This is not a project that we can support.

Miss POI

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