Area Of Avoidance

 

Whether we want to admit it or not every city has an area that you would not want to take your family on a stroll down the street. You wouldn’t want to have a flat, break-down or have an accident in that part of town, especially after dark. I live in a retirement community with a low crime rate but when I go to a big city I don’t always know what areas to avoid.
If you live in a city with areas like this could you create a TourGuide file that would cover just those areas? It would need to be based on actual crime rates and not on ethnic profiling.
Instead of a POI it could be a Point Of Disinterest or Area Of Avoidance file. Whatever name you come up with, I believe it would have great benefit to most of the members here.
I am planning on going to Little Rock, AR soon and will probably be arriving just about dark. Where do I stay? Where do I eat dinner? That’s what made think of this.

Is this a bad idea?
Has it been tried before?

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Nuvi 1450 Newbe When you see a fork in the road, Take it!

Interesting idea, but the

Interesting idea, but the "avoidance" will be highly subjective.

Is an area dangerous for a single young attractive female? Is it dangerous for a rough and tough biker? Is it dangerous for a police officer? etc etc...

Almost would be impossible to compile.

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http://www.poi-factory.com/node/21626 - red light cameras do not work

Then also

Someone from one of those areas may chime in saying 'It ain't so bad'....

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Striving to make the NYC Metro area project the best.

Interesting...

...and I'm all for it, but can the current units in the market do avoidance now? I know I have an old unit, but I don't remember seeing any units out there with "routes or places to avoid".

I'd love to lock out Wingdale mountain, not just because it is hazardous terrain (even though it is a peaceful area) with many sharp turns, it is also a steep climb and uses more gas in my car, yet my Garmin always routes through there as the fastest AND shortest route. Not to mention it is impassable in the winter (police closes the road after ice or snow). I always end up adding a waypoint in the direction I want to go just to "steer" my Garmin out of there.

I'd like to consider any model with a feature like that for my next gps purchase. Adding "avoidance" routes or areas is pretty subjective and it should be done by each user, as everyone has many different reasons to make such a file.

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Garmin nuvi 1300LM with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 200W with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 260W with 4GB SD card r.i.p.

Avoidance.

The custom avoidance feature works pretty good on the 8xx nuvi's. You can define avoidances for rectangular areas or for specific road segments. Of course the 8xx and 8x5 series are discontinued. It is too bad Garmin did not carry this feature forward to the newer models.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Thanks for the heads up

alandb wrote:

The custom avoidance feature works pretty good on the 8xx nuvi's. You can define avoidances for rectangular areas or for specific road segments. Of course the 8xx and 8x5 series are discontinued. It is too bad Garmin did not carry this feature forward to the newer models.

Too bad the feature isn't available in the new units. I'll keep my eyes open for a used 8xx series.

I'd draw a big rectangle around Wingdale mountain mrgreen

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Garmin nuvi 1300LM with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 200W with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 260W with 4GB SD card r.i.p.

Avoidance.

You can still pick up a NEW nuvi 855 with the custom avoidance feature ($126 at Amazon). That model was just recently discontinued.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

This was addressed once . . .

This was addressed once but I can't find the link for that. I do remember that it got pretty ugly and possible the post was removed. Here is another one but didn't get to far http://www.poi-factory.com/node/5502

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Looking for a place to go this summer? Try Oshkosh, WI, July 20-26, 2015. The largest gathering of aircraft in the world. http://www.airventure.org/index.html

Thread was banned.

You are correct bilson. It was the "unsafe neighborhood" thread. It was a very lengthy dicussion. I think Miss POI locked it and disabled it for good reason. If you try to access it now you get "Access Denied".

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Sorry I was so

Sorry I was so misunderstood. I never heard of custom avoidance. What I meant was a TourGuide file that would give a radius audible alert. The radius could be any size. It would give an audible alert and show up as different sized circles on MapSource. On MapSource you could plan your route. This I believe would work on all Nuvis.
The safety of my wife and grandchildren are very important to me. As I'm sure yours are to you. That's why I thought this would be a very important and doable project. I know that when I lived in the very wonderful city of San Diego I could have told you exactly where the gangs liked to shoot, stab, rob and rape. But that was over 10 years ago and the locations may have moved, just like every thing else.
It was not my intention to confuse anyone or stir up controversy. Just thought it was a good idea, a safety issue. Something easy to do using TourGuide to make audible alerts.
Sorry if I have offended anyone.

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Nuvi 1450 Newbe When you see a fork in the road, Take it!

I too...

think it's a decent idea, but the subject matter hits too close to home for some. (no offense to anyone in particular) Everyone's idea of a safe haven may be somewhat different. Also no one wants to see their beloved hometown on the 'Z' list.... (I certainly don't!)

My $0.02

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Striving to make the NYC Metro area project the best.

Hondas in Japan have a warning

The factory nav system in Japanese Hondas has a feature that warns about high crime areas.
http://gizmodo.com/382410/honda-gps-warns-drivers-of-high-cr...
Last I heard they had no plans to implement this for Hondas sold in the US.

Avoidances - 1 Yes Vote

I would like to have the ability to enter roads and areas to avoid. This will be feature I will seek on my next GPS.

The practical side.

Over the last year I have encountered a couple of scheduled road closures that would last a week or more and a couple of long-term accident closures. There is no way within my 765 to tell it that the road was closed and for what distance. Consequently there was no way to force the garmin to calculate a usable alternative route. Even the detour feature was of no use.

In all but one case I knew the road was going to be closed and had to study paper and online maps to figure out an alternate route to my destination. It would have been more convenient to use my GPS. The case where I did not have advance notice it would have been nice to mark the next couple of miles of closed road so the Garmin would not calculate alternate routes that attempt to put me back onto yet another section of the same closed road, as the detour function did multiple times.

Finally, there are high-crime areas of the city and roads that are so congested that I simply want to avoid them at different times. I would be nice to tag these areas so the routes calculated are the best alternate route based upon my preferences.

Having the ability to tag areas and roads with dates, days of the week, and times of the day would be a real plus. I would also like the ability to customize these in a program like mapsource as well as in the GPS on the fly.

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mbrun

Custom Avoidance

alandb wrote:

The custom avoidance feature works pretty good on the 8xx nuvi's. You can define avoidances for rectangular areas or for specific road segments. Of course the 8xx and 8x5 series are discontinued. It is too bad Garmin did not carry this feature forward to the newer models.

The only way to enter Custom Avoidances (that I ever found) is by hand into the nuvi itself. If you're trying to enter them ahead of time it takes a lot of scrolling and zooming to enter them when you're not in the vicinity of the avoidance. The functionality of Custom Avoidances would be greatly enhanced if you could load them as a gpx file. Some facilities have gates or roads which are only open certain times of the day. It would be useful if the Custom Avoidance could incorporate days and time of day to avoid.
Mark

Great Idea, however

19PapaBear44-
It's a great idea as well as something I'd consider working on myself, having wound up in quite a few unsavory places in our years of traveling! Even more interesting at night, on motorcycles.

I've looked into doing it but it's nowhere close to easy. To do what you need (imo), the local law enforcement needs to share their data in precise geographic detail, and most do not.

A 'first cut' of statistics is the FBI's CIUS data, but that only gives broad info by county or large city. The 'next cut' would then be to go to a site like CrimeReports.com and hope that the jurisdiction participates. After all of that is done, it's still a bit subjective (which is fine) due to the fact that single instances appear almost anyplace & it's tedious to zoom to groupings within a large area. If you did that, there is still no good way to automate location data, so it needs to be done by hand. Might work nationwide with quite a few volunteers though.

I checked Crime Reports for Little Rock, and they don't participate. But, you can get a broad view of L.R.'s 2009 crime stats at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_06.html#l and Arkansas by Counties here http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_10_ar.html

Good for you for doing your homework, and have a safe trip.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

I like the feature...

-Nomad- wrote:

The factory nav system in Japanese Hondas has a feature that warns about high crime areas.
http://gizmodo.com/382410/honda-gps-warns-drivers-of-high-cr...
Last I heard they had no plans to implement this for Hondas sold in the US.

...but this thread could degenerate into something like the one that got locked up. I would love to have the feature to "force" my nuvi into taking preferred routes. As I explained above, that mountain is dangerous in the geographical sense, with extremely sharp turns, steep climb, and very slippery in the winter. Very nice neighborhood otherwise (very large mansions there) so it is a non-crime area, that I'm aware of.

Still, I want to avoid it from the point of view of the climb (gas & wear on my car), the dangerous turns (too many dumb teens running off the road, speeding) and the weather. I'll be checking Amazon for the 8xx series. I think this feature should be available in ALL models (firmware update?). As it was said above, a GPX file with places to avoid should be a feature available to everyone. We can always keep those files out of the forum since they can be controversial.

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Garmin nuvi 1300LM with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 200W with 4GB SD card Garmin nuvi 260W with 4GB SD card r.i.p.

Not Controversial IMO, but Can't Currently Be Done

I for one don't think it's controversial to put an 1/8 mi alert ring around a location that's had x number of reported homicides, sexual assaults, vehicle thefts, and/or crimes involving weapons within x months.

Personally, my jurisdiction's police department sends their stats to CrimeReports and sure enough, it plots out to places that I've known since childhood weren't where I'd go after dark if I didn't have to.

The problem is that you can't get that level of information about most places. Then you have to rely on local opinion, which I've found to be controversial more than once.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

Like It

I would love to see something like this.

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Bob: My toys: Nüvi 1390T, Droid X2, Nook Color (rooted), Motorola Xoom, Kindle 2, a Yo-Yo and a Slinky. Gotta have toys.

This feature is built in to

This feature is built in to Mapsource.
EDIT>Preferences>Routing>Advanced

If you able to upload Routes to your Nuvi model, you can create the Route (with Avoidances) in Mapsource, then upload it from your computer to your Nuvi.

.

Have you tested that?

Do those avoidances actually transfer from MapSource to your nuvi?

:-(

Doesn't work on my 200W or 765T. A route itself with avoidances will clearly work (well, that's my guess), but avoidance's placed on the map and uploaded don't.

Having said that- my 200W will take the map upload but doesn't store routes & doesn't avoid the custom area in 'on the fly (GO)' routes. My 765T doesn't appear to use the uploaded map (no selection under Map Info..because it's not regional?) and doesn't avoid either.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

Curious

alandb wrote:

The custom avoidance feature works pretty good on the 8xx nuvi's. You can define avoidances for rectangular areas or for specific road segments. Of course the 8xx and 8x5 series are discontinued. It is too bad Garmin did not carry this feature forward to the newer models.

I'm curious how you found out about the custom avoidance feature on the 8xx series. I've just looked on the Garmin site at all of the 8xx models and didn't find any reference to 'custom' avoidance. How odd. I would have thought their marketing dept. would have jumped all over that feature.

Too bad I just bought a 295W. I like those 8xx units, and the current price.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

8xx custom avoid.

True, Garmin never listed it as a spec or feature. The only way you would know about it is by looking in the user manual or by reading about it in forums like POI Factory where it has often been discussed. In the nuvi line, the 5000 and 8xx are the only models to date that offered the custom avoid feature. I think some of the old Street Pilots may have also had it, but I am not sure.

One caveat with the custom avoid on the nuvi 8xx is that it is a different concept than the Mapsource custom avoids. On the nuvi, it can only be entered through the menu and will not import through a GPX file from Mapsource. Once you enable a custom avoid it is global and applies to all routes. You can't enable it for a single route.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Thanx

Thanx. I'll look up those threads. I was a little surprised to only just now find that mt 765T wouldn't take a map upload from MapSource like my 200W does (I might be doing something wrong though). I would have guessed that if an avoidance could be transferred it would be a modification to the map, but I've never explored avoidances much.

I'm curious now if the 8xx will take say just a state map transfer from MapSource, and thereby possibly a custom avoidance. Oh well, thanks again & I'm starting to get a bit off-topic I guess.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

Aviodances

Interesting thread. In the years before GPS, I went 4x4 using BLM maps - got into a closed area that wasn't marked as such. After showing the map I was using and an active military ID card, I was permitted to make a u-turn and depart without any additional investigation.

Area of avoidance

In the mean time you might consider looking at www.spotcrime.com before you go somewhere. It becomes pretty clear from their crime map which areas you should avoid. Downside is not all cities/towns have a map.

My original post was about

My original post was about creating a TourGuide file. This I know would work because I use TourGuide on my School Zone files. With TourGuide you pinpoint the center of the location then adjust the radius from that center point. This will draw a circle around that point. Now no matter what street you are on, as soon as you enter that circle, you will get an audible warning such as “You have entered a School Zone” or “You have entered a high crime zone.” That works and works well.
My question was and is; Where do I put the center point? If I lived in San Diego, Little Rock or any other big city, I could easily tell you. I just thought that one or two of our members could give the Lon., Lat. and length of the radius if they happened to live in a big city.
As an added benefit when you look at this on Mapsource you see those different sized circles and can plan your route accordingly.
All of this can be easily accomplished using EPE, Google Earth, and the local knowledge of where to put the center points and length of the radius. You would also need to create a .wav or .mp3 sound file for the warning. This can be done by going here: http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php and typing “You have entered a high crime zone.”
All of this is freely available. The local knowledge is the only missing equation.

In the mean time I would like to thank everyone that posted links to high crime data bases, which might be our only source of information.

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Nuvi 1450 Newbe When you see a fork in the road, Take it!

I agree, but a tough one

19PapaBear44 wrote:

..
My question was and is; Where do I put the center point? If I lived in San Diego, Little Rock or any other big city, I could easily tell you. I just thought that one or two of our members could give the Lon., Lat. and length of the radius if they happened to live in a big city...

I think that's where the controversy usually starts. In my opinion, law enforcement statistics are the only way to avoid (unintentional or otherwise) biased or inaccurate opinions. If you can put a center point where there have been x number of weapon crimes, assaults, etc. then it's unbiased statistics so there's no controversy, imo.

The problem is in places like where you're headed on your trip, with no real precise statistics available. Sure you could use the FBI stats, but then you're circling an entire county and that defeats your purpose as well as T's off the county residents & merchants. And, I personally wouldn't rely on local hearsay, even my own unless there were stats to back it up.

I found CrimeReport stats to be erratically displayed in my own area (Wash. D.C.) and my neighboring county doesn't even report & has the highest crime rate in the suburban MD area around the city.

I wish there was a solution nationwide even just for the major cities.. I'd be on board creating a file in a heartbeat.

Perhaps some sympathetic users will email you their opinion coords for Little Rock.

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It's about the Line- If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.

Dead for lack of coordinates?

JD4x4 wrote:

[I think that's where the controversy usually starts. In my opinion, law enforcement statistics are the only way to avoid (unintentional or otherwise) biased or inaccurate opinions. If you can put a center point where there have been x number of weapon crimes, assaults, etc. then it's unbiased statistics so there's no controversy, imo.

The problem is in places like where you're headed on your trip, with no real precise statistics available. Sure you could use the FBI stats, but then you're circling an entire county and that defeats your purpose as well as T's off the county residents & merchants. And, I personally wouldn't rely on local hearsay, even my own unless there were stats to back it up.

I found CrimeReport stats to be erratically displayed in my own area (Wash. D.C.) and my neighboring county doesn't even report & has the highest crime rate in the suburban MD area around the city.

I wish there was a solution nationwide even just for the major cities.. I'd be on board creating a file in a heartbeat.

Perhaps some sympathetic users will email you their opinion coords for Little Rock.

Thank you JD4X4. I see your point about getting reliable, unbiased map points. If no one knows for sure where the high crime areas are, then they can’t pinpoint it on a map. My original thought of creating a TourGuide of high crime areas would be rather easy to create, but without the coordinates and proximity radius, it becomes a dead issue.
I still can’t help thinking this would be useful to many members. To bad there is no data base of high crime areas with defined boundaries. That would make it super easy and non controversial. If any one knows where to get such information for any big city, please post it.

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Nuvi 1450 Newbe When you see a fork in the road, Take it!

I liked the custom avoidance capability my old 885T had

I liked the custom avoidance capability my old 885T had. I wish all the garmin's had the feature to avoid certain street segments or entire areas when calculating the route,

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Garmin Drive Smart 55 - Samsung Note 10 Smartphone with Google Maps & HERE Apps

Garmins

I agree with you rjrsw it would be good if this was a feature on all the garmins.

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Russ