Garmin and shopping center parking lots

 

I've noticed my Garmins can give some rather spurious results for proper directions for leaving/entering a parking lot and navigating to a location. Last night was interesting, we were headed to a restaurant adjacent to a shopping center. It was on the left across a divided highway. The fastest easiest way to get to the restaurant is to turn into the shopping center parking lot make an immediate left and go a few hundred yards to the restaurant. I started to follow Garmins directions, when I realized it was having me turn before the shopping center going .4 miles turning right on another side street for another .4 miles, then entering a second major road for a few tenths of a mile and coming back a few tenths the opposite direction on the road I was on. Luckly I could see the restaurant a couple blocks away and delayed the left turn until I got to the shopping center. Yes I would have eventually arrived at the restaurant following Garmin (I think I would have - I've never been on those side streets and likely never will be!), but what a convoluted route. I've noted similar problems finding restaurants in strip malls, etc. I went back and forth through one looking for a garmin restaurant choice which was no longer there. If it was to the right - it said to go left and vice versa. Eventually found empty store front and moved sign by address. Once your off the road and in a parking lot there's no telling what Garmin will say or won't say about your destination. Add in all the out of business restaurants still in the database, and you probably shouldn't wait to be hungry to have garmin look for your next meal location. Any other's note this feature?

We've started calling the phone number garmin gives for a business to ensure hours and location!

OH well...

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nuvi 250 --> 1250T --> 265T Lost my 1250T

U-Turn

Do you have your unit set to avoid U-turns? I have mine set up this way & my unit acts the exact same way. For me it's usually not a problem, because when I see it mapping out this type of arrival I know what and why its doing this.

The problem with not knowing exactly where the store is located in the mall is probably because all the database knows is the address is "in there somewhere", but hasn't been updated with more accurate information, yet.

Search "geocoding" on this site and you'll find a lot of information about inaccuracies of address location and how users are helping to improve this for everyone.

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Drivesmart 66, Nuvi 2595LMT (Died), Nuvi 1490T (Died), Nuvi 260 (Died), GPSMAP 195

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All consumer gps devices work this way. They give the coordinates of the address located on the public street. They do not lead you directly to the physical location within the mall.

In fact, the gps only "sees" malls as large empty lots. No interior road/building locations are mapped.

accuracy...

The fact that the GPS led you to your destination is what it is suppose to do. Greater accuracy GPS units (straight to the door) have still a long ways to go before we see them in the market.

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TOMTOM - LG LN740 - Magellan Roadmate 1430 - Garmin Nüvi 255W - Garmin 2455LMT

Addresses in a Mall

When the address is in a mall the gps gives the the coordinates of the street number in front of the mall! That happens to me in Clearwater where I was looking for a movie complex! I had to go around the parking lot to see where was place! The way I do is go to google and do a POI of the place, that way you can see the position in relation to the street!

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Gps! ask where to go and get there! Best of all, what we need is to have accurate pois to reach all destinations

no mall

The original poster said nothing about a mall.

But yes, I've seen plenty of times when I get to my destination and start turning in the parking lot the nuvi will give some very obviously wrong directions. Just the other day as I pulled into the parking lot I could see the store on my left but the nuvi said "recalculating" then advised me to turn right. If this was the worst problem with the garmin software, life would be good.

Since it sounds like the restaurant that you wanted wasn't actually in the shopping center but you were only cutting through their parking lot, I suspect the gps did the proper thing in giving you a less direct route. In some states it's even illegal to duck through a shopping plaza lot, particularly if you're avoiding a red light by doing so. I know people who have been ticketed for this. If you want to take an off-road short cut through private property, I'm not going to say that you can't or shouldn't, but the gps should not see such property as available roads for routing.

Froving -- NO I was not

Froving -- NO I was not doing a no-no. The parking lots were together and open to each other. One big happy parking lot.

And I do not have avoid Uee's checked. A Uee would have been superior(and legal) to the 'scenic route' garmin had in mind.

We also had the restaurant is on your right notification -- when it was actually on the left. Looked at the addresses and could tell the even address wasn't going to be on the odd side of the street... Looking at addresses can really be helpful when trying to find one of these hidden treasures...

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nuvi 250 --> 1250T --> 265T Lost my 1250T

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Frovinslosh - you may want to reread the original post. It does mention malls.

No left turns?

I think that the GPS tries to get you on the correct side of the road so you do not have to make a left turn across traffic to reach your destination.

Navigational Aid.

The GPS is a navigational aid.
It will get you to the area.
Checking maps and a little common sense will save a lot of grief.
The poster here did use common sense.

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It's these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes Nothing remains quite the same With all of our running and all of our cunning If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane

exact location?

i had a problem like this but i don't blame the gps rather city planners. i had an address on a crescent the actual address to the building entrance is on a street as the site is on a corner. the house number was 750. the gps as well as google earth both show the site half way down the block. i still got me a half block from the site just had to loop twice to find it. my wife thought the address was further away but i felt that the gps was likely the more accurate and calmer of the two. i think as the technology develops you will see more accuracy as they become aware of these problems

I agree -

islanderswp wrote:

The GPS is a navigational aid.
It will get you to the area.
Checking maps and a little common sense will save a lot of grief.
The poster here did use common sense.

I'm with you on this one. I hear "Recalculate" quite a bit with mine.

I heard the other day a lady is trying to sue Garmin because, "It made me drive through a washed out bridge and into the river".

Can't make up this stuff - it just happens.

Turn Left. Through Concrete

That's OK, I've had my unit to tell me to turn left when doing so would have required me to somehow drive through a concrete divider.

That and it has told me that the shopping center I was looking for was on the left (in a swampy marshland area) when it was clearly on the right.

It'll be nice once they get that teleportation stuff figured out.

RN

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When you can't say something nice....say RECALCULATING.

I wish in the near future we

I wish in the near future we will have GPSs with Google Earth database.

A similar thing happened to me

I was trying out my 255W when i first got it and i was using it to go to a local Lowes. I noticed that the lowes was in my unit under a poi under shopping so i programmed it in as my destination. It worked wonderfully to get me to the Lowes, but when i got on the street where the final destination was and ready to make a right into the parking lot, it suddenly said to make a left. If i had made a left id have to cross three lanes of traffic and end up in a bank parking lot.

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"Remember where ever you go there you are."

AND THEN AND THEN

Phaser77 wrote:

I was trying out my 255W when i first got it and i was using it to go to a local Lowes. I noticed that the lowes was in my unit under a poi under shopping so i programmed it in as my destination. It worked wonderfully to get me to the Lowes, but when i got on the street where the final destination was and ready to make a right into the parking lot, it suddenly said to make a left. If i had made a left id have to cross three lanes of traffic and end up in a bank parking lot.

And after you did that, it would have given you the happy arriving at destination message. Hard to miss a Lowes though, but if you'd been watching your garmin you would have 'known' you 'needed' to make a left and been in the 'appropriate'(wrong) lane. NOT a bad idea to look at the address listed in the garmin and double check against other addresses for side of road, etc... Especially when traveling...

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nuvi 250 --> 1250T --> 265T Lost my 1250T

??

I knew where the Lowes was the whole time, but since it was in my POI under shopping i figured id try it out and see how it would get me there. When i got there the Garmin was wrong telling me it was on the wrong side of the street. It was at night and addresses are hard to see at night, plus once again i already knew where the lowes was, and when i got in front of the building in the right lane it said arriving at final destination on the LEFT when it was on the right. No wrong lane warning or anything, plus you cant direct full attention to your garmin while driving, garmin knows this thats why they installed text to speech which told me the final destination was somewhere on the wrong side of the street.

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"Remember where ever you go there you are."

Yes Phaser, seeing addresses

Yes Phaser, seeing addresses at night can be especially difficult when driving alone. When I can, I try to do an address double check. Getting a birds eye view on google or bing can also be helpful. It's surprising how dependent you can get on one of these in a very short time. In the olden days all you had were the addresses and you could go a long time before spotting one you could read and then a second one to make sure you were still headed in the right direction...

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nuvi 250 --> 1250T --> 265T Lost my 1250T

to mall or not to mall

GadgetGuy2008 wrote:

Frovinslosh - you may want to reread the original post. It does mention malls.

No, it does not. It talks about shopping centers. In one place there is mention of "strip malls", which as I know the term is another word for shopping centers. But the response that I was responding too talked about stores inside enclosed malls, which is a pretty different topic.

It turns out that even for shopping centers (a.k.a. strip malls) the gps can't have the actual coordinates or address of a store in the shopping center, since it doesn't route through parking lots properly. The best it will do is route you to the parking lot entrance.

Avoiding the run-around

Garmin errs on the side of "caution;"
We err on the side of "human"
This has happened to me when I visit out of town, looking for restaurants. That is why I try to make a visual sweep of the area as well as listen to the voice on the Nuvi, and if I do not listen to her, she says, "recalculating, come on Maxey, you can trust me!!!"

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Being ALL I can be for HIM! Jesus. Kenwood DNX9980HD Garmin 885t

The same thing happens to me

The same thing happens to me sometimes. The other day I had a dentist appointment at a new dentist's office, so I wasn't too familiar with the area. When I was leaving, I entered in a destination for another appointment. I could easily take a left turn out of the parking lot of this dentist's office, but my Garmin instead wanted me to leave out of the side entrance that goes out onto a street, which I still could have turned left from. Then it wanted me to take a right turn, drive about .4mi, turn left & go about .2mi, take another left & go .4mi, then another left & go .2mi, then a right turn onto the road. All of those turns were down side streets. I guess for some reason it thought that I couldn't turn left either out of the parking lot or from the side street. Normally it can tell when I can turn left out of parking lots, although there are times when it tells me to go left when I can't because it's a divided highway. One time it even told me to turn the wrong way down a one-way street. It's always a good idea to use common sense when following the Garmin's directions (or any GPS unit), and always pay attention to the signs and right-of-ways. I don't want to be the next story about a traveller getting lost and stuck because of blindly following my GPS.

GPS Tech

The actual purpose of a GPS is to tell you where you are on the planet earth. And this they do very well. You can take 12 GPS unit and look at "Where am I" screen and the all should show the same coordinates with in a reasonable amount of deviation. If you tell the GPS what new coordinate you want to go to it will get you to that point on earth. This in all reality doe not require the use of roads. Ask anyone familiar with land navigation before the wide use of a GPS. Just using a compass and a topographical map.

Now what we get as an extra is the ability to be routed do an address. This is solely dependent on the maps given to the GPS manufacture. There are so many points on these maps that it is nearly impossible to keep up with address change/location, washed out bridges, cut throughs that either exist or don't exist.

As mentioned the fact the the GPS got you to the location you wanted it did it's job. There are other times that the GPS may take you several mile down the street no where near the location. This is not a GPS problem but a problem with the mapping software. This is why the community has created these custom POI's. To get better accuracy to the many point that Garmin and other manufactures do not have the time to update.

There are many post's on here to varying degrees on this same subject. Until everyone goes to the GPS coordinate of addressing there will always be problems. Someone mentioned the teleportation thing. Is it going to go by address or GPS coordinates. Hope they put the coordinates in the correct way so you do not wind up in the middle of a body of water or desert.

Nuvi has Oak Brook Center

Frovingslosh wrote:

...
It turns out that even for shopping centers (a.k.a. strip malls) the gps can't have the actual coordinates or address of a store in the shopping center, since it doesn't route through parking lots properly. The best it will do is route you to the parking lot entrance.

Not necessarily. Look at Oak Brook Center in Oak Brook IL in MapSource and many of the stores are marked by actual location in the mall. It even shows the mall entrances. So it CAN be done if the reporting agencies choose to do so.

Most do not, of course. A look at Westfield Fox Valley in Aurora IL shows all the POIs around the perimeter road. You would think store owners would want accurate POIs to help shoppers find their stores.

It's a shame that the maps and routing engines don't have a way to accommodate this. I work in a large office park and the map/routing just leads me to the street out front. I thought it would be better to save a current location that was further in, and in front of the actual building I work in. Big mistake. Routing to THAT point would require a 4 wheel drive capable of climbing a fence. wink

Subject field is required.

johnc wrote:
Frovingslosh wrote:

...
It turns out that even for shopping centers (a.k.a. strip malls) the gps can't have the actual coordinates or address of a store in the shopping center,...

Not necessarily. Look at Oak Brook Center in Oak Brook IL in MapSource ...

Sure, Mapsource (and perhaps other maping software) can pin down the location more accurately. Does the nuvi have it also, or just Mapsource? And the nuvi COULD be more accurate, IF it treated the parking lot as a set of streets and routed the owner through the parking lots to a final address or coordinate. But I have yet to find a case where the nuvi does this, it certainly doesn't seem to do it for any of my local malls or shopping centers. Trying to be more precise actually results in getting routed to somewhere physically close to the destination, but the place that you are routed to may have no physical access to the final destination.

Also, for a large mall such as Oakbrook, are there perhaps named city streets running through the parking lot that the GPS is using to find the store's final address?

I certainly don't know that every mall lacks routing info, and if there are street names inside the parking lot then routing likely extends to them. Maybe the nuvi might even be configured with a few like Oakbrook and the Mall of America. But as a general rule you can't expect it. And POI file creators will have to be content with getting people to the parking lot, trying to be more accurate can have negative effects. And nuvi users will continue to get bad directions from their GPS after they enter their destination's parking lot for most lots.

parking lots

The thing that still has eluded me is that "Last Position" on my 765t. Some Large shopping centers here have 3 story parking lots and and they can go half way around the mall also. Its not an issue at home here because i know my way around, but i didn't buy my Garmin for at home. So here is where i test it, so when it matters i will know what it can or cannot do.
Take it off its cradle and it will give you a Last Position. I can see the vehicle but my unit for some reason will not take me there. There has to be some way to make this work. rolleyes

Claudius

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2 DriveSmart 65's - We do not live in Igloo's and do not all ride to work on snow mobiles.

Straight line to your car

Speed2 wrote:

The thing that still has eluded me is that "Last Position" on my 765t. Some Large shopping centers here have 3 story parking lots and and they can go half way around the mall also. Its not an issue at home here because i know my way around, but i didn't buy my Garmin for at home. So here is where i test it, so when it matters i will know what it can or cannot do.
Take it off its cradle and it will give you a Last Position. I can see the vehicle but my unit for some reason will not take me there. There has to be some way to make this work. rolleyes

Claudius

I bet you forgot to set your unit to 'Off Road' to return to your car while at the mall (or stadium, or field, any non-road place).

I mention this in article
CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?
- Finding my car at the Shopping Mall/Stadium/Disneyland/Airports/Mustang Ranch

See if that works for you

GARY HAYMAN
Garmin Tricks & Tips
arrow http://bit.ly/garmin_gps_tricks

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Garmin DriveSmart 61 LMT-S, Prev.GPSs: Drive61 LM, nuvi 3790LMT, 755T & 650, GPSIII+, SP 2610, 250W; Magellan 2200T; Originator of GARMIN NUVI TRICKS, TIPS, WORKAROUNDS, HINTS, SECRETS & IDEAS http://bit.ly/GARMIN-TNT

Your the Man

ghayman wrote:

I bet you forgot to set your unit to 'Off Road' to return to your car while at the mall (or stadium, or field, any non-road place).

I mention this in article
CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?
- Finding my car at the Shopping Mall/Stadium/Disneyland/Airports/Mustang Ranch

See if that works for you

GARY HAYMAN
Garmin Tricks & Tips
arrow http://bit.ly/garmin_gps_tricks

That's the second time you set me straight. Yep your right i didn't do the off road thing. Did read Car 54 where are you though, but i guess the lights weren't on. redface

Thanks
Claudius

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2 DriveSmart 65's - We do not live in Igloo's and do not all ride to work on snow mobiles.

Straight line to your car

Hmm still no werky on my 765t. I set under Navigation Route Preference to Off road and even went into system and set Usage mode to Pedestrian.

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2 DriveSmart 65's - We do not live in Igloo's and do not all ride to work on snow mobiles.

Shows on Nuvi, too

Frovingslosh wrote:

... Sure, Mapsource (and perhaps other maping software) can pin down the location more accurately. Does the nuvi have it also, or just Mapsource?

Nuvi and MapSource are using the same 2009 map. Yes, the Nuvi shows it, too. In the case of Oak Brook mall, they are not city streets, but they have named access roads which have been included in the 2009 maps. The 2008 maps did not have this. I have noticed in some similar instances - like airport access roads - the Nuvi will have the road on the map but just call it "road". Regardless, it leads me to the Budget Car Rental lot.

I agree that most malls will not have this data, and that even this data is incomplete. But it's a lot better than a 1 mile blank square in the map like it used to be. My only point was that it COULD be done. It just isn't BEING done most of the time. I wonder why not? If I was a retailer, (I used to be) I would want detailed POIs out there with coordinates that would direct people right to my cash register. grin I would have the marketing people hound Navteq until it got done, and even pay for them to do it.

What absolutely floors me is going to a company's web site, using their 'store locator' and it shows a significantly inaccurate MapQuest or Google map location that's based on an inaccurate geocoding. How hard could it be for their marketing people to grab a screen shot and manually place a pushpin in the right spot? Retailers spend millions to get people to WANT to go to their stores. It wouldn't be that much harder to make it EASY to get there.