Garmin Traffic
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   14 years
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I use that term loosely in the Subject.
Just wanted to share my experience today. I had to drive this morning to a location that is normally 50 mins from my house. It was a work event and I had to leave during rush hours. As I booted up my GPSr, it predicted about a 50 minute drive at first. Soon after I left my driveway, it quickly adjusted, having evaluated the traffic. Suddenly, it predicted 1 hour 25 minutes. Yikes! I needed to be there in 1 hour and 30 mins. Fortunately I had left early and wasn't going to be late IF things didn't get worse.
Those of you that use your traffic function know that this estimate changes a little as you drive your route, no doubt due to changing traffic conditions.
Mine was no exception.
Amazingly though, I arrived in exactly 1 hour and 25 minutes.
Garmin's traffic providers get a lot of flak here, and some blame Garmin, which is totally unfair.
I just wanted to share that in my case, on this one day, it was spot on.
garmin spot on
One evening I was driving home from a two hour trip on a three-lane limited access parkway. Everyone was going 70 in a 55 mph zone in heavy traffic.
The GPS chimed and displayed, "Road closed ahead due to accident." In about 30 seconds, everybody was in a panic stop as traffic stopped completely.
If not for that timely warning, I may have had an accident.
dobs108
Very Helpful!
On interstate highways with decent traffic flow, I find Garmin Live Traffic via Smartphone Link to be quite accurate. As Sixeye says, arrival times will vary with changing conditions. On rural roads or highways with little traffic however, traffic reporting accuracy is lacking and sometimes non existent.
For the most part though, I'm happy with the service and find it very useful.
Well
On rural roads or highways with little traffic however, traffic reporting accuracy is lacking and sometimes non existent.
That's simply due to the fact those roads aren't covered, not all are by the various traffic reporting systems that Garmin draws its data from. Here in the UK we get excellent reports on major routes but the traffic companies see little point in committing funds to the minor routes. In France again the service is good on the major routes, non existent on minor ones.
Where there's a will ... there's a way ... DriveSmart51LMT-S, DriveSmart50LMT-D, Nuvi 2508LMT-D, 1490LMT, 1310, Montana 650T, Etrex 20
Traffic
Actually showed up on my 1390T for the 1st time in 2 years.