Lifetime Traffic --- Better Late Than Never ...

 

After Much Soul Searching..... Purchased Lifetime Traffic... Premium Traffic Subscription by Navteq – North America

Much Soul Searching because during the Demo I never saw anything from it..... In Chicago no less!!

So there I am, sitting in 0 Degree Temperatures in the garage... Entering in the codes..... With cold and stiff fingers... Didn't realize you had to enter each line separately... and wouldn't have known that if the code enter buffer stopped accepting characters....
Eventually got it in....

I know we covered this before.... but did someone post a link to pictures of what it looks like when traffic shows you something???

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A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!

I don't have a picture handy

I don't have a picture handy but what you'll see is:
- A traffic map somewhere which will show a grey/black of the major roads in your area (interstates) and the current flow/incidents (flow depends on city as not all cities have flow data) of traffic. With the FM traffic you'll get yellow and red highlights on either side of the road indicating flow.
- A list of traffic incidents (I'm guessing here for the nüvi but it should be something as simple as going to the main menu and then clicking 'Traffic' to get a list of incidents).

I've posted this elsewhere but a general rundown:
- always tell the GPS where you are going unless it's just around the corner to the store. This will let the GPS look for traffic information along your current route and it will popup an icon if there's a problem or route around it automatically if you have it set that way.
- I recommend not having it avoid traffic automatically as it's not as smart as you. You know the roads and what generally happens each day. The GPS sees 'slowing traffic' as a problem (like 40-50MPH = yellow on the map) and it will route around it trying to save you time and may very well cost you more time on surface streets.

Set your expectations:
- It's not going to change rush hour.
- It's not immediate - meaning, if an accident just happened it takes time for someone to report it, type in the data, and for that data to be distributed. If an accident cleared it may be still reporting it even though your driving through that same area and everything is fine.

The basic gist of traffic is to tell you about things you wouldn't normally know about and have you make an educated decision on what to do. Going home in the afternoon and you get a traffic alert on your GPS - you check it out and see that 4 of the 5 lanes of a major interstate are blocked on your route. Now you can figure out what you're going to do about it (and tell the GPS to route you around, it if you think that's the way to go). This is where traffic pays off.

Traffic

I work in Chicago and I use it all the time to route me around traffic. I doesn't give me any time back. Meaning I don't get to the destination any sooner but it does keep me moving. I hate sitting still I would rather just keep moving.

Traffic

I'm with you, lupo. I have several routes I can take to work and will pick the one that has the least traffic even if it takes me more out of my way and a little longer to get there. Sitting in traffic raises blood pressure and reduces lifespans and satisfaction.

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JMoo On

Stop and go traffic does

Stop and go traffic does suck especially if you have a manual transmission and it's going just fast enough to move forward but not fast enough to stay in 1st. Those are the worst.

I'd say it's helped me a few times where there was an incident that had most/all of a road blocked and I routed around it.

There have been a few times on the weekend where it'd remind me where the construction was so I could avoid it (like 3 out of 5 lanes blocked because of construction).